‘Nothing wrong with it,’ Sharpe protested. He was in the front rank and had to turn and push his way between Garrard and Mallinson to hand the gun over.
Hakeswill snatched the musket and gleefully presented it to Captain Morris. ‘See, sir!’ the Sergeant crowed. Just as I
thought, sir! Bastard sold his flint, sir! Sold it to an ‘eathen darkie.’ Hakeswill’s face twitched as he gave Sharpe a triumphant glance. The Sergeant had unscrewed the musket’s doghead, extracted the flint in its folded leather pad and now offered the scrap of stone to Captain Morris. ‘Piece of common rock, sir, no good to man or beast. Must have flogged his flint, sir. Flogged it in exchange for a pagan whore, sir, I dare say. Filthy beast that he is.’
Morris peered at the flint. ‘Sell the flint, did you, Private?’ he asked in a voice that mingled derision, pleasure and bitterness.
‘No, sir.’
‘Silence!’ Hakeswill screamed into Sharpe’s face, spattering him with spittle. ‘Lying to an officer! Flogging offence, sir, flogging offence. Selling his flint, sir? Another flogging offence, sir. Says so in the scriptures, sir.’
‘It is a flogging offence,’ Morris said with a tone of satisfaction. He was as tall and lean as Sharpe, with fair hair and a fine-boned face that was just beginning to show the ravages of the liquor with which the Captain assuaged his boredom. His eyes betrayed his cynicism and something much worse: that he despised his men. Hakeswill and Morris, Sharpe thought as he watched them, a right bloody pair.
‘Nothing wrong with that flint, sir,’ Sharpe insisted.
Morris held the flint in the palm of his right hand. ‘Looks like a chip of stone to me.’
‘Common grit, sir,’ Hakeswill said. ‘Common bloody grit, sir, no good to man or beast.’
‘Might I?’ A new voice spoke. Lieutenant William Lawford had dismounted to join Morris and now, without waiting for his Captain’s permission, he reached over and took the flint from Morris’s hand. Lawford was blushing again, astonished by his own temerity in thus intervening. ‘There’s an easy way to check, sir,’ Lawford said nervously, then he drew out his pistol, cocked it and struck the loose flint against the pistol’s
steel. Even in the day’s bright sunlight there was an obvious spark. ‘Seems like a good flint to me, sir,’ Lawford said mildly. Ensign Fitzgerald, standing behind Lawford, gave Sharpe a conspiratorial grin. ‘A perfectly good flint,’ Lawford insisted less diffidently.
Morris gave Hakeswill a furious look then turned on his heel and strode back towards his horse. Lawford tossed the flint to Sharpe. ‘Make your gun ready, Sharpe,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Lawford and Fitzgerald walked away as Hakeswill, humiliated, thrust the musket back at Sharpe. ‘Clever bastard, Sharpie, aren’t you?’
‘I’II have the leather as well, Sergeant,’ Sharpe said and, once he had the flint’s seating back, he called after Hakeswill who had begun to walk away. ‘Sergeant!’
Hakeswill turned back.
‘ You want this, Sergeant?’ Sharpe called. He took a chip of stone out of his pocket. He had found it when he had untied the rag from the musket’s lock and realized that Hakeswill had substituted the stone for the flint when he had pretended to inspect Sharpe’s musket. ‘No use to me, Sergeant,’ Sharpe said. ‘Here.’ He tossed the stone at Hakeswill who ignored it. Instead the Sergeant spat and turned away. ‘Thanks, Tom,’ Sharpe said, for it had been Garrard who had supplied him with a spare flint.
‘Worth being in the army to see that,’ Garrard said, and all around him men laughed to have seen Hakeswill and Morris defeated.
‘Eyes to your front, lads!’ Ensign Fitzgerald called. The Irish Ensign was the youngest officer in the company, but he had the confidence of a much older man. ‘Got some shooting to do.’
Sharpe pushed back into his file. He brought up the musket, folded the leather over the flint and seated it in the doghead, men looked up to see that the mass of the enemy was now
just a hundred paces away. They were shouting rhythmically and pausing occasionally to let a trumpet sound or a drum flourish a ripple, but the loudest sound was the beat of their feet on the dry earth. Sharpe tried to count the column’s front rank, but kept losing count as enemy officers marched slantwise across the column’s face. There had to be thousands of the tiger troops, all marching like a great sledgehammer to shatter the two-deep line of redcoats.