“For God’s sake,” the brigadier managed to say.
“As brave a man as ever I saw, sir, so you are,” Geoghegan said, and he smiled reassuringly at Sharpe. “Are you ready, sir?”
“How hard do I pull?”
“A good tug, sir, just like pulling a lamb that doesn’t want to be born. Are you ready? Take firm hold, sir, both hands! Now!”
Sharpe pulled, the brigadier gave a high-pitched cry, Geoghegan screwed the material even tighter, and Sharpe distinctly heard the bone grate into place. Geoghegan was stroking the brigadier’s leg now. “And that’s just good as can be, sir, good as new, sir.” Moon did not respond and Sharpe realized the brigadier had either fainted or was in such shock that he could not speak.
Geoghegan splinted the leg with the sticks and the net. “He can’t walk on it, not for a while, but we’ll make him crutches, we will, and he’ll be dancing like a pony soon enough.”
The rifles sounded and Sharpe turned and ran down the hill to where his greenjackets were kneeling on the turf. They were about a hundred and fifty yards from the river and sixty feet above it, and the French were crouching in the water. They had been trying to haul the big barges off the shingle, but the bullets had ended that effort and now the men were using the pontoon hulls as protection. An officer ran into the shallow water, probably shouting at the men to get to their feet and try again, and Sharpe aimed at the officer, pulled the trigger, and the rifle banged into his shoulder as an errant spark from the flint stung his right eye. When the smoke cleared he saw the panicked officer running back to the bank, holding his scabbarded sword clear of the water in one hand and clutching his hat in the other. Slattery fired a second time and a splinter smacked up from one of the pontoons. Then Harper’s next shot threw a man into the river and there was a swirl of blood in which the man thrashed as he drifted away. Harris fired and most of the French waded away from the pontoons to take shelter behind some boulders on the bank.
“Just keep them there,” Sharpe said. “As soon as they try to shift those barges, kill them.”
He climbed back up the hill. The brigadier was propped against a rock now. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“Frogs are trying to salvage the barges, sir. We’re stopping them.”
The boom of the French guns in Fort Josephine echoed down the river valley. “Why are they firing?” the brigadier asked irritably.
“My guess, sir,” Sharpe said, “is that some of our boys are trying to use a pontoon as a boat to look for us. And the frogs are shooting at them.”
“Bloody hell,” Moon said. He closed his eyes and grimaced. “You wouldn’t, I suppose, have any brandy?”
“No, sir, sorry, sir.” Sharpe would have bet a penny against the crown jewels that at least one of his men had brandy or rum in their canteen, but he would be damned before he took it away from them for the brigadier. “I’ve got water, sir,” he said, offering his canteen.
“Damn your water.”
Sharpe reckoned he could trust his riflemen to behave sensibly until they managed to recross the river, but the six fugitives from the 88th were another matter. The 88th were the Connaught Rangers and some men reckoned them the most fearsome regiment in the whole army, but they also had a reputation for wild indiscipline. The six rangers were led by a toothless sergeant and Sharpe, knowing that if the sergeant was on his side then the other men would probably cause no trouble, crossed to him. “What’s your name, Sergeant?” Sharpe asked him.
“Noolan, sir.”
“I want you to watch over there,” Sharpe said, pointing north to the crest of the hill above the bluff. “I’m expecting a battalion of bloody frogs to come over that hill, and when they do, sing out.”
“I’ll sing right enough, sir,” Noolan promised, “sing like a choir, I will.”
“If they do come,” Sharpe said, “we’ll have to go south. I know the 88th is good, but I don’t think there’s quite enough of you to fight off a whole French battalion.”
Sergeant Noolan looked at his five men, considered Sharpe’s statement, then nodded gravely. “Not quite enough of us, sir, you’re right. And what are you thinking of doing, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“What I’m hoping,” Sharpe said, “is that the frogs will get tired of us and bugger off. Then we can try to float one of those pontoons and get across the river. Tell your men that, Sergeant. I want to get them home, and the best way home is to be patient.”
A sudden rattle of rifle fire drew Sharpe back to Harper’s position. The French were making another attempt to free the pontoons, and this time they had made a rope by linking their musket slings together and three men were bravely fastening the line to one of the samsom posts. One man had been hit and was limping back to the shore. Sharpe began reloading his rifle, but before he had rammed the leather-wrapped ball down the barrel, the remaining Frenchmen sprinted back to their shelter, taking the line with them. Sharpe saw the rope come dripping from the river as men hauled on it. The line straightened and tightened and he guessed that nearly all the French were tugging on it, but he could do nothing about it for they were hidden by the big boulder. The line quivered and Sharpe thought he saw the pontoons shift slightly, or perhaps that was his imagination, and then the rope snapped and Sharpe’s riflemen jeered loudly.
Sharpe looked upriver. When the bridge had broken there had been seven or eight pontoons left on the British side and he was sure someone had thought to use one as a rescue craft, but no such boat appeared and by now he suspected the French cannons had either holed those pontoons or else driven the work parties away from the shore. That suggested rescue was a remote hope, leaving him with the need to salvage one of the six stranded barges.
“Does this remind you of anything?” Harper asked him.
“I was trying not to think about it,” Sharpe said.
“What were those other rivers called?”
“The Douro and the Tagus.”
“And there were no bloody boats on those either, sir,” Harper said cheerfully.
“We found boats in the end,” Sharpe said. Two years ago his company had been trapped on the wrong side of the Douro. Then, a year later, he and Harper had been stranded on the Tagus. But both times they had found their way back to the army, and he would again now, but he wished the damned French would leave. Instead the troops hidden beneath him sent a messenger back to Fort Josephine. The man scrambled up the hill and all the riflemen turned to aim at him, hauling back the flints of their weapons, but the man kept looking back, dodging and ducking, and his fear was palpable and somehow funny so that none of them pulled their triggers.
“He was too far away,” Harper said. Hagman might have dropped the man, but in truth all the riflemen had felt sorry for the Frenchman who had shown bravery in risking the rifle fire.
“He’s gone to fetch help,” Sharpe said.
Nothing happened then for a long time. Sharpe lay on his back watching a hawk slide in the high sky. Sometimes a Frenchman would peer round the rocks below, see the riflemen were still there, and duck back. After an hour or so a man waved at them, then stepped cautiously out from the boulder and mimed unbuttoning his breeches. “Bugger wants a pee, sir,” Harris said.
“Let him,” Sharpe said and they raised the rifles so the barrels pointed at the sky. A succession of Frenchmen went to stand by the river and all politely waved their thanks when they were done. Harper waved back. Sharpe went from man to man and found they had nothing but three pieces of biscuit between them. He made one of Sergeant Noolan’s men soften the biscuit with water and divide it equally, but it was a miserable dinner.