JК
Sharpes Siege :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 172 из 223Immediately, with a shiver, the column stepped over the bodies. A slow ripple seemed to move down the column as the succeeding ranks negotiated the dead and wounded.
Riflemen concentrated on reloading; working with fast, practised hands, ramming ball and wad and powder down clean barrels, aiming again, firing again, reloading again.
At a hundred paces Sharpe blew two blasts on his whistle. Those Riflemen whose places were on the other ramparts ran back to their stations.
The field guns stopped firing.
It seemed oddly quiet. The drumming and shouting still continued, but the ear-hammering percussion of the twelve-pounders was over. The howitzers, firing still, made a more muffled, coughing sound. A wounded man, under the razor, screamed from the surgery tunnel and a Marine, for no apparent reason, vomited.
“At this range,” Sharpe walked down the line of Marines and kept his voice as matter-of-fact as a drill-sergeant, “aim two feet above the target.” He glanced at the enemy. “Take aim!”
The red-coated men pushed their muskets over th,e embrasures.
“Fire! Reload!”
A Frenchman crawled across the sand of the glacis, trailing blood.
A Marine, hit by a skirmisher’s musket ball, spun backwards, teetered on the edge of the firestep, then fell into the burning branches of the pine abatis.
“Fire!”
A howitzer shell cracked on the firestep beside Sharpe and span into the courtyard where its explosion made a ball of filthy smoke shot through with red flames.
“Fire!” Lieutenant Fytch shouted. He pointed his pistol at a French officer not fifty yards away and pulled the trigger. The gun rammed a shock up his arm and blotted his view with smoke.
A Marine’s musket hangfired and he threw the gun into the courtyard and picked up the weapon of a dead man. The ammunition left in the pouch of the corpse who had fallen into the burning abatis began to explode.
The Riflemen, knowing that survival depended on the speed of their work, no longer rammed shots home, but tap-loaded their guns by rapping the butts on the rampart then firing the weapon into the gap between the glacis’ shoulders. Musket balls and rifle bullets spat into the enemy, but still the column came forward. Sharpe, who had seen it so often before, was again amazed at how much punishment a French column would endure. Three of the Marines, issued with civilian blunderbusses taken from the surrounding villages, poured their fire into the column’s head.
The shape of the attack was clear now.
Riflemen concentrated on reloading; working with fast, practised hands, ramming ball and wad and powder down clean barrels, aiming again, firing again, reloading again.
At a hundred paces Sharpe blew two blasts on his whistle. Those Riflemen whose places were on the other ramparts ran back to their stations.
The field guns stopped firing.
It seemed oddly quiet. The drumming and shouting still continued, but the ear-hammering percussion of the twelve-pounders was over. The howitzers, firing still, made a more muffled, coughing sound. A wounded man, under the razor, screamed from the surgery tunnel and a Marine, for no apparent reason, vomited.
“At this range,” Sharpe walked down the line of Marines and kept his voice as matter-of-fact as a drill-sergeant, “aim two feet above the target.” He glanced at the enemy. “Take aim!”
The red-coated men pushed their muskets over th,e embrasures.
“Fire! Reload!”
A Frenchman crawled across the sand of the glacis, trailing blood.
A Marine, hit by a skirmisher’s musket ball, spun backwards, teetered on the edge of the firestep, then fell into the burning branches of the pine abatis.
“Fire!”
A howitzer shell cracked on the firestep beside Sharpe and span into the courtyard where its explosion made a ball of filthy smoke shot through with red flames.
“Fire!” Lieutenant Fytch shouted. He pointed his pistol at a French officer not fifty yards away and pulled the trigger. The gun rammed a shock up his arm and blotted his view with smoke.
A Marine’s musket hangfired and he threw the gun into the courtyard and picked up the weapon of a dead man. The ammunition left in the pouch of the corpse who had fallen into the burning abatis began to explode.
The Riflemen, knowing that survival depended on the speed of their work, no longer rammed shots home, but tap-loaded their guns by rapping the butts on the rampart then firing the weapon into the gap between the glacis’ shoulders. Musket balls and rifle bullets spat into the enemy, but still the column came forward. Sharpe, who had seen it so often before, was again amazed at how much punishment a French column would endure. Three of the Marines, issued with civilian blunderbusses taken from the surrounding villages, poured their fire into the column’s head.
The shape of the attack was clear now.