Lieutenant Price was lying full length, his shako tipped over his eyes, and he smiled as he listened to Sharpe’s swearing. When it was done he pushed his shako back. ‘It’s because we’re working on a Sunday. Breaking the Lord’s Day. Nothing good ever came out of working on the Sabbath, that’s what my Father says.’
‘It’s also the 13th.’ Sergeant McGovern’s voice was gloomy.
‘We are working on Sunday,’ Sharpe said with forced patience, ‘because that way we will get this job done by Christmas and you can rejoin Battalion. Then you can eat the geese that Major Forrest has kindly purchased and get drunk on Major Leroy’s rum. If you’d prefer not to, then we’ll go back to Frenada now. Any questions?’
Price made his voice into that of a small lisping boy. ‘What are you buying me for Christmas, Major?’
The Sergeants laughed and Sharpe saw that Gilliland, at last, was ready. He stood up, brushing earth and grass from the French cavalry overalls he wore beneath his Rifleman’s jacket. ‘Time to go. Come on.’
For four days now he had practised and rehearsed with Gilliland’s rockets. He knew, or thought he knew, what he would have to say about them. They did not work. They were entertaining, even spectacular, but hopelessly inaccurate.
They were not new in war. Gilliland, who had a passion for the weapon, had told Sharpe they were first used in China hundreds of years before, and Sharpe himself had seen rockets used by Indian armies. He had hoped that these British rockets, the product of science and engineering, might prove to be better than those which had decorated the sky at Seringapatam.
Congreve’s rockets looked just like the fireworks that celebrated Royal days in London, except these were much bigger. Gilliland’s smallest rocket was fully eleven feet long, two feet of which was the cylinder containing the powder propulsion and tipped with a roundshot or shell, the rest made up of the rocket’s stout stick. The largest rocket, according to Gilliland, was twenty-eight feet long, its head taller than a man, and its load more than fifty pounds of explosive. If such a rocket could be persuaded to go even vaguely near its target it would be a fearful weapon.
For two hours again, beneath a cloudless sky in which the December sun was surprisingly warm, Sharpe exercised Gilliland’s men. It was probably, he thought, a waste of all their time for Sharpe doubted if Gilliland would ever need to liaise with infantry in battle, yet there was something about this new weapon that fascinated Sharpe.
Perhaps, he thought as he cleared his thin skirmish line for the fourth time from the front of the battery, it was the mathematics of the rockets. A battery of artillery had six guns, yet it needed a hundred and seventy-two men and a hundred and sixty-four horses to move it and serve it. In battle the battery could deliver twelve shots a minute.
Gilliland had the same number of men and horses, yet at full fire he could deliver ninety missiles in the same minute. He could sustain that rate of fire for a quarter of an hour, firing his full complement of one thousand and four hundred rockets, and no artillery battery could hope to rival that power.
There was another difference, an uncomfortable fact. Ten of the twelve cannon-fired shots would hit their target at five hundred yards. Even at three hundred yards Gilliland was lucky if one rocket in fifty was even close.
For the last time that day Sharpe cleared his skirmish line. Price waved from the far side of the valley. ‘Clear, sir!’ Sharpe looked at Gilliland and shouted. ‘Fire!’ Sharpe’s men grinned in anticipation. This time only twelve small rockets would be fired. Each lay in an open-ended trough so that it would skim the ground when it was ignited. The artillerymen touched the fire to the fuses, smoke curled into the quiet air, and then, almost together, the twelve missiles exploded into movement. Great trails of smoke and sparks slammed backwards, the grass behind the troughs was scorched by fire, and the rockets were moving, faster and faster, rising slightly above the winter-pale field, filling the valley with their tangled roar, screaming above the pasture as Sharpe’s men whooped with joy.