Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

CHAPTER 8

Five French dead and one dead Rifleman were laid in the fort’s chapel, not out of reverence, but simply because it was the most convenient place for the corpses to lie until there was time to bury them. Lieutenant Minver stripped the white frontal from the altar and ordered two of his men to tear it into strips for bandages; then, being a well-trained young man who had been told constantly by his parents never to leave a light burning in an empty room, he pinched out the flame of the Eternal Presence before going back to the courtyard.

The Teste de Buch was in chaos. Riflemen manned the ramparts while Marines and sailors seethed in the courtyard. The six field guns, with their limbers, had been dragged into the fort where they were objects of much curiosity to the seamen. The Scylla, her flanks riven by the heavy shot, was moored beneath the silent guns.

The Marines’ packs and supplies were being ferried from a brig anchored below the Scylla, then slung over the fort’s wall by a system of ropes and pulleys. The Marines had marched in light-order, but had still reached the fort two hours after Sharpe’s Riflemen.

“I must thank you, Major Sharpe.” Captain Bampfylde limped on blistered feet into the room where Sharpe was being bandaged by a naval surgeon. Bampfylde flinched at the sight of so much blood on Sharpe’s face and shirt. “My dear fellow, permit me to say how sorry I am?”

The surgeon, a drunkard of morose disposition, answered in place of Sharpe. “It’s nothing, sir. Head wounds bleed like a stuck pig.” He finished the bandaging and gave Sharpe’s head a light buffet. “I’ll warrant you’ve got a head like a bloody bass drum, though.”

If the man meant painful, then he was right, and the friendly tap had not helped, but at least Sharpe’s sight had come back as soon as the blood was washed from his eyes. He looked up at Bampfylde whose young, plump face looked tired. “The fort wasn’t exactly deserted.”

“So it seems!” Bampfylde crossed to the table and examined a bottle-of wine abandoned by the French garrison. He plucked out the cork and poured a little into a convenient glass. He smelt it, swirled it around, examined it, then sipped it. “Very nice. A trifle young, I’d say.” He poured more wine into the glass. “Still, no bones broken, eh?”

“I lost one man dead.”

Bampfylde shrugged. ‘Scylla lost sixteen!“ He said it as if to show that the Navy had taken the greater punishment.

“And the Marines?” Sharpe asked.

“Two men were scratched,” Bampfylde said airily. “I always thought that clearing was the most likely place for an ambuscade, Sharpe. If they want to catch the likes of us, though, they’ll have to show a livelier leg, what?” He laughed.