Cornwell, Bernard 01 Sharpe’s Tiger-Serigapatam-Apr-May 1799

‘In five minutes, sir, when the Tippoo wonders why his fireworks aren’t going off? And he sends a dozen men to find out what’s happening. You and me? We’re going to fight all those buggers off alone?’

Lawford hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said uncertainly.

‘I do, sir,’ Sharpe said, and he pushed the burning rocket onto the fuse and immediately a quick and bitter fire began to fizzle and spark down the powder-impregnated rope. Gudin tried to stub it out with his foot, but Sharpe unceremoniously shoved the Frenchman aside. ‘Are you hurt bad, sir?’ he asked Gudin.

‘Broken shoulder, Sharpe.’ Gudin looked close to tears, not

because of his wound, but because he had failed in his duty. ‘I’ve no doubt Doctor Venkatesh will mend it. How did you escape?’

‘Killed a tiger, sir, and some more of those jetti buggers.’

Gudin smiled sadly. ‘The Tippoo should have killed you when he had the chance.’

‘We all make mistakes, sir,’ Sharpe said as he watched the fire burn through the stone barricade that had been piled up in front of the ancient archway’s gates. ‘I reckon we’d better get you into cover, sir,’ he said, and he pulled an unwilling Gudin into a doorway where Lawford was already crouching. The smoke was thinning from the alley. A wounded jetti was crawling blindly against the farther wall, another was vomiting and Sergeant Rothiere was groaning. There was blood bubbling at the Sergeant’s nostrils, and the back of his head was black with gore.

‘I reckon you’ve just made Sergeant, Sharpe,’ Lawford said.

Sharpe smiled. ‘I reckon I have, sir.’

‘Well done, Sergeant Sharpe.’ Lawford held out a hand. ‘A good day’s work.’

Sharpe shook his officer’s hand. ‘But the day’s work ain’t done yet, sir.’

‘It isn’t?’ Lawford asked. ‘For God’s sake, man, what else are you planning?’

But Lawford never heard what Sergeant Sharpe answered, for at that moment the mine blew.

CHAPTER 11

The Tippoo’s engineers had done their work well. Not all the mine’s force was directed northwards, but the greater part of it was, and that part was devastating. The explosion scoured the space between the inner and outer walls, a space that should have been packed with British soldiers.

To Sharpe, peering round the doorway, it at first looked as though the whole squat gatehouse disintegrated; not into rubble and dust, but into its constituent stones, for the dressed granite blocks all jarred slightly apart as the ancient building bulged from the terrible pressure of the fire within. Dust sprang from every opened crevice as the big stones separated cleanly along their mortared joints, then Sharpe lost sight of the collapsing gatehouse because there was suddenly nothing but dust, smoke, flame and noise. He jerked back into shelter and covered his head with his arms when the noise boomed past him just an instant after he had seen the dust whip past the doorway as the gasses escaped from the expanding fire.

The noise seemed to go on for ever. First there was the swelling bang of the powder exploding, then the grinding crash of stones cracking and tumbling and the whistle of shards whirling away across the city, and then there was a ringing in Sharpe’s ears and above the ringing, but sounding as far away and as thin as the trumpet that had heralded the assault, the screams of men caught by fire or blast or stone. After that came the sound of a wind, an unnatural wind that scoured thatch off houses, threw down tiles and raised dust

devils in streets a quarter of a mile away from the explosion.

The men on the walls nearest the gatehouse saw nothing, unless it was the flash that ended their lives, for the explosion plucked the Tippoo’s defenders clean off the ramparts south of the breach. The wall itself was undamaged, even where it ran past the gatehouse, for there the old outer archway was blown out like a bung and a monstrous jet of smoky flame jetted from the city wall to vent the explosive’s power safely beneath the ramparts, but the squat tower over the old gateway fell. It collapsed slowly, sliding down into the space between the inner and outer walls. Scraps of brick and stone arched up and outwards, splashing in the river just ahead of Baird’s advancing columns. More scraps of stone rained down on the city.

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