The Riflemen who had guarded the extremities of the west wall scrambled from their strongholds and ran to the ladders.
Calvet, seeing it, knew his enemy was finished. “Charge!”
“Back! Back! Back!” Sharpe pushed his men away. Now the French could have the fort, but now came the worst moment, the difficult moment, the end of Sharpe’s battle and the race for the boats.
The Riflemen had no time to queue at the ladders, instead they jumped from the walls and fell headlong in the sand. Sharpe waited, standing in one of the embrasures with his sword drawn. Harper came to his side but Sharpe snarled at him to go.
The French charged over the bodies of the dead. They wanted revenge, but found an empty rampart. Empty but for the one officer, sword drawn, whose face was like death. That face checked them for a few seconds, enough to let Sharpe’s men scramble towards the sea’s edge.
Then Sharpe turned and jumped.
The landing knocked all the breath from him. He pitched forward, rifle falling from his shoulder, and his face hit the wet sand.
A hand grabbed his collar and hauled him up. Harper’s voice shouted, “Run!”
Sharpe’s mouth was filled with gritty sand. He spat. He stumbled on the body of one of the Frenchmen dumped on this strip of sand the day before, sprawled, then ran again. His shako was gone. Frenchmen were standing on the ramparts above while to his right, from the north, the cavalry appeared.
The two longboats, oars rising and falling with painful slowness, inched towards the small breaking waves of the channel’s beach. The first Riflemen were in the water, wading towards the boats, reaching for them.
Cornelius Killick, in the leading boat, bellowed an order and Sharpe saw the oars back, saw the clumsy boats swing, and he knew that Killick was turning the craft so that the wider sterns would face the shore.
“Form line!” Frederickson was shouting.
Sharpe swerved towards the shout, pawing sand from his eyes. Thirty Riflemen were bumping into a crude line at the very edge of the sea. Sharpe and Harper joined it.
“Front rank kneel! Present!” Frederickson, as if on a battlefield, faced the cavalry with two ranks that bristled with blades. The leading horseman, an officer, leaned from his saddle to swing his sabre, but the light blade clanged along the sword bayonets like a child’s stick dragged on iron palings.
“Back! Back!” Sharpe shouted it.
The small line marched backwards, step by step, into the sea. Waves drove at their calves, their thighs, and the shock of the cold water reached for their groins.
Horsemen spurred into the sea. The horses, frightened by the blades and waves, reared.
“Come on, you bastards!” Killick shouted. “Swim!”
“Break ranks!” Sharpe shouted it. “Go!” He stayed as rearguard. His rifle encumbered him and he let it drop into the water.
A horseman swung a sabre at Sharpe and the Rifleman’s long sword, used with both Sharpe’s hands, broke the man’s forearm. The Frenchman hissed with pain, dropped his sabre, then his horse jerked back towards dry land. Another horseman was twisting his sabre’s point in a Rifleman’s neck. There was blood, splashes, and more yellow-teethed horses plunging into the foam. Harper, still holding the axe, swung it at the horseman who sheered clumsily away while the body of a Rifleman was tugged by the tide. Harper dragged the body towards the boats, not knowing that the man was already dead.
The infantry had jumped from the ramparts and shouted at the cavalry to make way. Sharpe, teeth snarling, dared them to come. He taunted them. He stepped towards them, wanting one of them to try, just one.
“Sir!” a voice shouted from behind. “Sir!”
Sharpe stepped backwards and, seeing it, the French attacked.
A sergeant led them. He was old in war, toughened by years of campaigning, and he knew the Englishman would lunge.
Sharpe lunged. The Frenchman jerked his musket aside, parrying, and bellowed his victory as he thrust forward.
He was still shouting as Sharpe’s sword, which had been twisted over the bayonet’s stab, punctured his belly. Sharpe turned the blade, pushing, and the blood spewed into the breaking foam as the blade seemed to be swallowed by the big belly. Sharpe stepped back, jerked the sword, and the blade came free in a welter of new blood.
“Sir!”
He went backwards. Another horseman drove into the water and Sharpe swung his blade at the horse’s head, it reared, then a man came from his other side, an officer in a darker uniform, and Sharpe turned, parried a clumsy thrust, and drew his sword back for the killing thrust.
“Not him! Not him!” Killick shouted it.
Sharpe checked his thrust.
Lassan, knowing that he would not die on this day of rain and savagery, lowered his sword into the water. “Go.”
Sharpe went. He turned and plunged further into the sea. The longboats were already pulling away. Men clung to the transom of the nearest boat while other men, safely in the craft, reached hands and rifles towards him.
A pistol bullet spat in a plurne beside Sharpe’s face. He was up to his chest now, half wading and half swimming, and he reached with his left hand, lunged, and caught an outstretched rifle barrel.
“Pull!” Killick shouted. “Pull!”
A last cavalryman charged into the sea, but an oarblade, slapped down on to the water, frightened the horse. The French, their muskets made useless by rain, could only watch.
Sharpe clung to the rifle with his left hand. The weapon’s foresight dug into his palm. The sword in his right hand was dragging him down, as was the heavy scabbard. He kicked with his feet, water slopped into his mouth and he gagged.
“Pull! Pull! Pull!” Killick’s voice roared over the clanking of the Thuella’s windlass that dragged the anchor clear of the channel’s silt. The sails were dropping into the small wind and the Thuella was stirring in the water.
The boats bumped on the ship’s side and men pushed the Riflemen towards the deck. Someone took Sharpe’s collar and hauled him dripping and heavy into the longboat. “Up!”
A ladder was built into the ship’s side. Sharpe, unsteady in the rocking longboat, thrust his sword into his scabbard that squirted water as the blade went home. He reached for the ladder, climbed, then American hands hauled him on to the Thuella‘s deck. He had swallowed sea-water and, with a sudden spasm, he vomited it on to the scrubbed deck. He gasped for breath, vomited more, then lay, chest heaving, in the scuppers.
He heard cheers, German and Spanish and British cheers, even American cheers, and Sharpe twisted, looked through a gunport, and saw the coastline already sliding past. French gunners were wrestling the twelve- pounders through wet sand, but too late and to no avail. The longboats were being towed at ropes’ ends, the Thuella’s wet sails were filling with a new, easterly breeze, and the French were left behind, impotent.
They had escaped.
EPILOGUE
Cavalry was nervous on wet fields. French horsemen would summon courage, ride a few yards forward, then swerve away from a threatened British volley. Unseen artillery, firing at unseen targets, punched the drizzling air, while infantry, shivering in the February cold, waited for orders.
Sharpe’s force, pushing four handcarts loaded with wounded, came to the skirmish from the north. A squadron of French cavalry saw them, wheeled right, then drew curved sabres for the charge.
“Two ranks! Fix swords!” Sharpe sensed the enemy would not press the charge home, but he went through the dutiful motions and the enemy officer, seeing the waiting bayonets, and not knowing that there was not a single loaded musket or rifle in the twin ranks, dutifully withdrew. The battle, if battle it was, seemed too scattered
