‘We’ve got the powder in the horns.’ Sharpe was speaking of the fine powder that every rifleman carried in a horn. The powder was kept for the special shots, when marksmanship might be spoiled by the coarser powder of cartridges, but Sharpe knew that, even if spare bullets could be found, the extra powder would not be sufficient for more than six or seven hundred rounds.
So more men were sent out to search for powder. The villagers had duck guns, therefore there must be powder in the countryside, and Sharpe gave the men permission to pull walls down to find hidden supplies. He would be lucky, he thought, to even double his ammunition supply, so other means of killing Frenchmen must be devised.
Lieutenant Fytch had a dozen men sharpening pine stakes that had first been hammered into the bed of the wet ditch. The stakes, whittled to points with knives and bayonets, were hidden beneath the water in those places Sharpe judged the most dangerously exposed to French assaults. Above the stakes, heaped on the ramparts, were piles of masonry that had been loosened by Bampfylde’s explosions. A building stone, dropped from the firestep, would kill a man as effectively as any bullet, yet the piled masonry seemed a pathetic weapon to prepare against whatever might come from the east.
‘Perhaps they won’t come,’ Patrick Harper said.
‘There aren’t supposed to be many troops in this area,’ Sharpe said hopefully.
‘I suppose they was ghosts we were fighting two days ago?’ Harper asked innocently. ‘And perhaps we won’t need this bastard.’ He slapped the breech of one of the two twelve-pounder guns rescued from the ditch. Harper had taken it upon himself to make the guns battleworthy. Presently there was not enough powder to fire even one cannon, but Harper prayed enough propellant would be scraped up from the local village. Like many an infantryman he was fascinated by cannon and wanted desperately to make at least one of these guns capable of firing a shot. With a gentleness that was surprising in such a huge man, and with a tenacity Sharpe had seen before in the Irishman, Harper was using a narrow-bladed awl to dig the iron spike, scrap by bright scrap, out of the vent-hole.
‘Can it be cleared?’ Sharpe asked.
Harper’s pause seemed to suggest that the job might be expedited if officers did not insist on asking him damn-fool questions, then he shrugged. ‘I’ll clear the bastard it if takes all day and night, sir.’
By the afternoon Sharpe fervently hoped that the cannons could be made to work, for Lieutenant Minver had struck gold. Or rather, in the strongroom at the back of the Customs House at Le Moulleau, he had found eight barrels of black powder.
‘It’s filthy stuff, sir,’ Minver said dubiously.
Sharpe fingered some of the powder in his right hand. It was old, it smelt damp, and it was the worst kind of black powder; that made from the dusty leavings of finer powder and adulterated with ground pit-coal, but it was still gunpowder. He put a pinch into the pan of his rifle, snapped the flint on to the frizzen, and the powder fizzed dirtily. ‘Mix it with the other captured powder. And well done.’
A laboratory was made in the chapel where three men tore pages from Lassan’s remaining books and twisted the paper into crude cartridges that were filled with the coarse powder. They lacked bullets as yet, but Frederickson had a squad of men ripping the lead from the church at Arcachon and Sergeant Rossner was stoking a fire in the furnace that had once heated the French shot and Lieutenant Fytch was the possessor of a pistol that came complete with a mould for bullet-making which, though slightly smaller in calibre than the muskets or rifles, would still make a usable missile. Some undamaged bullets were raked out of the burned barracks where, Sharpe supposed, his spare ammunition had been exploded by Bampfylde.
More powder still came from Arcachon and from the villages of Le Teste, Pyla and Le Moulleau. There were leather bags of powder, boxes of powder, and small barrels of powder. There were even musketoons, an ancient match-lock, six blunderbusses, eight duck guns, and a fine duelling pistol that had yet another bullet mould in its wooden case.
The men were busy and, as ever, purposeful activity made them content. When a cheer announced that Patrick Harper had succeeded in making one of the twelve-pounders battleworthy, that contentment soared into a confidence that belied the desperation of their predicament. Harper started on the second twelve-pounder gun. ‘Unless you’d like me to work on one of the big buggers?’ he asked Sharpe hopefully.
Sharpe declined the offer. He did not have enough men to raise one of the vast thirty-six pounders from the channel, nor could he spare the powder needed to fire one of the huge guns. Even these smaller field guns, if they could both be fired, would not be used more than once or twice. They were weapons for emergency only.
‘Sir!’ The wounded man watching inland waved to Sharpe. ‘Visitor, sir!’
Sharpe ran to the gate, walked across the precarious plank bridge, and saw a tall, long-haired man walking towards the glacis.
It was Cornelius Killick, and the sight of the American astonished Sharpe. He had thought Killick would have long gone inland, yet here was the privateer captain looking for all the world as though he merely took an afternoon stroll. Sharpe met the American beyond the glacis. ‘I thought you’d gone to Paris, Mr Killick.’
Killick ignored Sharpe’s greeting, staring instead at the work being done to barricade the fort’s blackened archway. ‘You look as if you’re expecting trouble, Major.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Stranded, are you? A modern Robinson Crusoe?’
‘Maybe.’
Killick laughed at Sharpe’s evasive answers, then allowed himself to be drawn away from the fort. ‘I’m doing a bit of repair work myself.’
‘You are?’
‘I’m putting an elmwood arse on an oak-built ship.’ The American grinned. ‘The Thuella wasn’t quite as knocked up as I thought. You want passage, Major Sharpe?’
‘To America?’ The thought amused Sharpe.
‘We make fine whisky, Major,’ Killick said persuasively, ‘and fine women!’
‘If you say so, but I’ll refuse just the same.’
The two men walked to the sand dunes by the channel where the American opened a leather bag and offered Sharpe an oyster. ‘Ever eaten a raw oyster, Major?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps you’d better not. You might accuse me of breaking my promise not to fight Englishmen.’ Killick laughed, broke a shell open with a clasp knife, and tipped the oyster into his mouth. ‘So you’re in trouble.’
‘I can’t deny it.’
Killick sat and, after a moment’s hesitation, Sharpe sat beside him. He suspected the American had come here for some purpose, though Killick was at pains to make the visit seem casual. The purpose could be simply to spy on Sharpe’s preparations, but Killick had made no real effort to enter the fort and seemed content to have Sharpe’s attention. The American tossed empty shells on to the sand. ‘Some of my men, Major, being less civilized than myself, ain’t happy with me. All because of my oath, you understand. If we can’t fight, then we can’t make money.’
‘Is that why you fight?’
Killick shrugged. ‘It’s a business, Major. The Thuella cost my principals one hundred and sixty-three thousand new-fangled dollars. They’ve made a profit, but have you ever known a merchant content with a simple profit? And if my men don’t take prizes, my men starve, so they’re unhappy.’
‘But alive,’ Sharpe observed drily.
‘There is that,’ Killick allowed. ‘But their pride is hurt.
They had to squat in Gujan while a British brig put a couple of roundshot into their boat and I wouldn’t let them fire back. I’m now being accused of cowardice, lack of patriotism, bastardy, even atheism! Me!‘ Killick’s tone suggested that he could more than cope with the grumbles of his crew.
‘I’m sorry.’
Killick gave Sharpe a long, pensive look. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t release me from my promise?’
Sharpe smiled at the innocence with which the question had been ask
ed. ‘Why on earth should I?’
‘I can’t think of a good reason,’ Killick said cheerfully, ‘except that it irks me. Oh, it was fair! I grant you that. And I’d take it again if it would save my excellent hide for another few years, but it irks. This is my only war, Major, and I am damned good at it. Damn good.’ The statement was not a boast, but a bleak fact and it reminded Sharpe of that noontide at St Jean de Luz when this big, confident man had made a monkey out of the Navy. Killick shrugged. ‘I want to be released from that oath. It keeps me awake at nights, it itches like the pox, it irks.’
‘The answer’s still no.’
Killick nodded, as though he had known he could not change Sharpe’s mind, but had nevertheless made a dutiful effort. ‘Why did those bastards run out on you?’
‘I don’t know.’
The American cocked an eye towards the sky. ‘It might have been the weather. I thought we were in for one hell of a blow, but the damn thing disappeared. Strange weather here, Major. You expecting them back?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But they haven’t come today, my friend, so my bones tell me you’re in trouble.’ Killick gave a slow, friendly grin. ‘You’re between the devil and the deep blue sea, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe.’
The American laughed. ‘You could always join my crew, Major. Just march your men to Gujan and I’ll sign you all on. You want to be an American citizen?’
Sharpe laughed. The teasing was good-natured, and came from a man that Sharpe instinctively liked. If Killick had been British, Sharpe thought, and dressed in a green jacket, he would have made a damn fine Rifleman. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sign your men up in the Rifles? I could start you off as a corporal.’
‘I’ve had my bellyful of land fighting,’ Killick said with a rueful honesty. He gave a wistful glance towards the open sea, then looked again at Sharpe. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you defeated, Major.’
‘I don’t intend to be.’
‘And I’m mindful,’ the American continued as though Sharpe had not spoken, ‘that you saved my life. So even if you won’t release me from my oath I reckon I owe you something. Isn’t that right, Major?’
‘If you say so.’ Sharpe spoke with the caution of a man wary of an enemy bringing a gift.
But this enemy smiled, shucked an oyster, then tossed the shell halves on to the sand in front of Sharpe. ‘They used to collect tons of those things out of the bay. Tons! Used to take them to a place at the end of the channel,’ Killick jerked a thumb north, ‘and burn them, Major. Burn them. They stopped a few years back because they couldn’t ship the stuff out any more, but there’s a stone barn full of it up there. Full of it.’ Killick smiled.
Sharpe frowned, not understanding. ‘Full of what?’ ‘Major! I may bring you breeches, but I’m damned if I’m going to pull them up for you.’ Killick twisted another oyster apart with his blade, then shrugged. ‘Always think I’m going to find a pearl in these damn things, and I never do. Lassan was pretty astonished you spared our lives, Major.’ The last sentence was said as casually as his remark about pearls.
‘Lassan?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He was the commandant here. Scrupulous sort of fellow. So why did you, Major?’
The question was evidently asked seriously, and Sharpe thought carefully about his answer. ‘I find it hard to hang people, even Americans.’
Killick chuckled. ‘Squeamishness, eh? I was hoping I’d talked my way out of a hanging. All that guff about never hanging a sailorman in still airs.’ Killick grinned, pleased with his cleverness. ‘It was all bally-hoo, Major. I just made it up.’
Sharpe stared at the American. For days Sharpe had believed, with all the force a superstition could command, that by showing mercy to Killick he had saved Jane’s life. Now it was bally-hoo? ‘It isn’t true?’
‘Not a word, Major.’ Killick was pleased with Sharpe’s shock reaction. ‘But I thank you anyway.’
Sharpe stood. ‘I have work to do.’ His hopes were sliding into a bleak despair. ‘Good day to you.’
Killick watched the tall figure walk away. ‘Remember, Major! Oyster shells! Halfway between here and Gujan, and that ain’t bally-hoo!’
Sharpe went into the fortress. He wanted to speak with no one. Suddenly all the preparations he had made against siege seemed useless, contemptible, and pathetic. The hay-rakes, taken from the villages, seemed feeble instruments with which scaling-ladders could be knocked aside. The two guns, made ready by Harper, were toys to swat at a monster. The pine abatis was a bauble, no more of an obstacle than a sheep hurdle. Jane was dying. Sharpe could not see beyond that fact.
‘Sir!’ Frederickson ran up the stone ramp. ‘Sir!’
Sharpe, who had been sitting in one of the embrasures that faced the channel, looked up. ‘William?’
‘Two thousand of the buggers, plus two batteries of artillery.’ Frederickson’s mounted Riflemen had returned on lathered horses with the grim news.
Sharpe looked down again, wondering what purpose the white lines on the rampart, each numbered, had served.
‘Sir?’ Frederickson frowned.
Sharpe’s head jerked up again. ‘Two thousand, you say?’
‘At least.’
Sharpe forced himself to attend to the news. ‘How far?’
‘Three hours.’
‘They’ll arrive in darkness,’ Sharpe spoke softly. Somehow he did not care if it was two or twenty thousand.
‘Sir?’ Frederickson was puzzled by Sharpe’s mood.
‘Tell me,’ Sharpe suddenly stood, ‘what happens when you burn oyster shells?’
‘Oyster shells?’ Frederickson frowned at the strange question. ‘You get quicklime, of course.’
‘Lime?’ Sharpe told himself he could not wallow in self-pity. He had men to defend and an enemy to defy. ‘It blinds people?’
‘That’s the stuff,’ Frederickson said.
‘Then we’ve got three hours to fetch some.’ Sharpe was shaking himself back to normal. He passed on Killick’s directions and ordered one of the limbers taken north.
Two hours later, when the light was nothing but a glow above the western horizon, eight barrels of quicklime were carried into the fortress. Like the powder from the Customs House it was old and damp through too long storage behind the lime-kilns and it clumped in great dirty-white fist-sized lumps, but Frederickson took the barrels to the gallery where the cooking fires were lit and levered off the barrel tops so that the powder would start to dry. ‘It’s a nasty weapon,’ he said to Harper.
‘It’s a nasty war,’ Harper crumbled one of the lumps, ‘and if the Frogs decide not to fight, sir, we can always paint the bloody place white.’
From the courtyard outside came the sound of stones whispering on steel as the bayonets were sharpened. The job was being done with the obsessiveness of men who knew that careful preparation could fractionally tip the casual scales of life and death in their favour. Sharpe, listening to the hiss of steel, tried to guess what his enemy planned.
The French, he decided, would be mostly raw troops. They would arrive in weary darkness and head for the village that promised shelter and water. Yet their General would know that a surprise night asault could bring him swift victory. If Sharpe was that General he would assemble his veterans and send them on a silent march to the north, from whence, while the defenders were distracted by the noise of the troops in the village, those veterans would strike.
So Sharpe must strike first.
Except that, sitting in the gathering dusk, Sharpe was assailed by bleak and horrid doubts. One hundred and seventy men, desperately short of ammunition, faced over ten times their own number. The enemy brought guns, while Sharpe only had the two twelve-pounders that were loaded, like the duck-guns, with scraps of stone and metal. It was madness to fight here, yet unthinkable to surrender without a fight.
Captain Frederickson, his face smeared black with dampened soot scraped from the shattered kitchen chimney, crouched beside
Sharpe. ‘I’ve chosen a dozen men, sir. Including Harper.’
‘Good.’ Sharpe tried to imbue his voice with enthusiasm, but could not succeed. ‘I don’t understand, William, why the bastards are fighting us. Why not let us rot here? Why waste men on us?’
‘Christ knows, sir.’ Frederickson obviously did not care.
He only anticipated a rare fight. ‘You’ll want a prisoner, no doubt?’
‘It would be useful, William.’ Sharpe stared eastwards, but there was still no sign of the approaching French forces. ‘I wish I could come with you.’
‘You can’t, sir.‘
‘No.’ This was one of the sacrifices of command; that Sharpe must delegate. In years past he would have liked nothing better than to have led a raiding party against the enemy, but now he must stay in the fortress where the nervous garrison could see and take confidence from his calm demeanour.
He walked with Frederickson to the north-west corner of the fort where, with the aid of a fishing net hung from an embrasure, the Riflemen climbed down to the night-shadowed sand. The shining metal of their weapons and uniforms had, like their faces, been blacked. They carried no packs, no canteens, only ammunition, bayonets, and firearms. They were Sharpe’s best and if he lost them tonight he would lose this battle.
When they had disappeared into the darkness Sharpe turned and walked, feeling suddenly lonely, to the eastern ramparts. He waited there, staring inland, until at last the sounds came from the darkness.
‘Sir?’ A Marine sentry spoke nervously.
‘I hear it, lad.’ Sharpe heard the chink of trace chains, the thump of wheels, the noise of artillery drawn behind horses. He heard, too, the soft thunder made by boots. The French had come.
For a long time he could not see the enemy. There was no moon and the land was dark. He heard the noises, he heard the voices raised in sudden orders, then a flash of lantern light showed, another, and slowly, dimly, Sharpe made out the darker mass that seemed to mill into the village to the south.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege Page 84