Sharpes Escape   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

More muskets flared as the 88th, the feared Connaught Rangers, wheeled forward of the line to blast at thewounded French column, but somehow the French held on. Their outer ranks and files were being killed and injured, but the mass of men inside the column still lived and more were climbing the hill to replace the dead, and the whole mass, in no good order, but crowding together, tried to advance into the terrible volleys. More red- and brown-jacketed troops were moving towards the fight, adding their musketry, but still the French pushed against the storm. The column was dividing again, torn by the slashing round shots and ripped by canister, so now it seemed as though disorganized groups of men were struggling uphill past piles of dead. Sharpe could hear the officers and sergeants shouting them on, could hear the rattle of the frantic drums, which was now challenged by a British band that was playing "Men of Harlech."

"Not very appropriate!" Major Forrest had joined Sharpe and had to shout to make himself heard over the dense sound of musketry. "We're hardly in a hollow."

"You're wounded," Sharpe said.

"A scratch." Forrest glanced at his right sleeve, which was torn and bloodstained. "How are the Portuguese?"

"Good!"

"The Colonel was wondering where you were," Forrest said.

"Did he think I'd gone back to the light company?" Sharpe asked sourly.

"Now, now, Sharpe," Forrest chided him.

Sharpe clumsily turned his horse and kicked it back to Lawford. "The buggers aren't moving!" the Colonel greeted him indignantly. Lawford was leaning forward in his saddle, trying to see through the smoke and, between the half-company volleys, when the foul-smelling cloud thinned a little, he could just make out the huge groups of stubborn Frenchmen clinging to the hillside beneath the crest. "Will bayonets shift them?" he asked Sharpe. "By God, I've a mind to try steel. What do you think?"

"Two more volleys?" Sharpe suggested. It was chaos down the slope. The French column, broken again, was now clumps of men who fired uphill into the smoke, while more men, perhaps another column altogether or else stragglers from the first, were continually joining the groups. French artillery was adding to the din. They must have brought their howitzers to the foot of the slope and the shells, shot blind into the fog, were screaming overhead to crash onto the rear area where women, campfires, tents and tethered horses were the only casualties. A group of French voltigeurs had taken the rocky spur where Sharpe had placed his picquet in the night. "We should move those fellows away," Sharpe said, pointing to them.