Sharpes Eagle   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

Then, for ten minutes, there was no time to watch anything but the Voltigeurs to the front, to do anything but run and fire, run and fire, to try and keep the French skirmishers pinned back against theircolumn. The enemy seemed more numerous, the drumming louder, and the smoke from the muskets and rifles silted the air with an opaque curtain that surrounded Sharpe’s company and the white-coated Voltigeurs with their strange, guttural cries. Sharpe was taking the Light Company back towards the spot where the South Essex should have been, widening the gap between his company and the German skirmishers. His company was down to less than sixty men and, at the moment, they were the only troops between the column and the empty plain at the rear of the British line. He had no chance of stopping the column, but as long as he could slow down the advance then there was a hope that the gap might be filled and the sacrifice of his men justified. Sharpe fought with the rifle until it was so fouled he could hardly push the ramrod into the barrel; the Riflemen had long stopped using the greased patch that surrounded the bullet and gripped the rifling instead; like Sharpe, they were ramming charge and naked ball into their guns as fast as they could to discourage the enemy. Some men were running back, urinating into their guns, and rejoining the battle. It was crude but the fastest method of cleaning the caked powder out of a fouled barrel on the battlefield.

Then, at last, the blessed sound of raking volleys, of the platoon fire, as the troops of the Legion and the Guards tore apart the heads of the French columns and shattered them, drove the ranks back, destroyed the leading troops, hammering the volleys into the out-gunned columns. Sharpe could see nothing. The Dutch Battalion had marched into the gap onto the flank of the 7th Battalion of the King’s German Legion and stopped. The Germans were fighting on two fronts, ahead of them, and to the side where the South Essex should have been, and Sharpe could give them little help. The Voltigeurs had disappeared, back into the column to swell its numbers, and Sharpe and his company, black-faced and exhausted, were left in the centre of the gap watching the rear of the enemy column as it tried to roll up the flank of the Germans.

“Why don’t they march on?” Lieutenant Knowles was beside him, bleeding from the scalp, and with the face, suddenly, of a veteran.

“Because the other columns are being defeated. They don’t want to be left on their own.” He accepted a drink from Knowles’ canteen; his own was shattered, and the water was wonderfully cool in his parched throat. He wished he could see what was happening but the sound, as ever, told its own story.