‘That’s us, boys,’ Fitzgerald said and drew his sabre. His left arm was throbbing now, but he did not need it to fight with a blade. He would keep going.
The Grenadier and Light companies advanced from the two flanks of the battalion. Wellesley halted them, formed them into a line of two ranks and ordered them to load their muskets. Ramrods rattled into barrels. ‘Fix bayonets!’ the Colonel called and the men drew out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the musket muzzles. It was full night now, but the heat was still like a wet blanket. The sound of slaps echoed through the ranks as men swatted at mosquitoes. The Colonel curbed his white horse at the front of the two ranks. ‘We’re going to chase the enemy off the embankment,’ he said in his cold, precise voice, ‘and once we’ve cleared them away Major Shee will bring on the rest of the battalion to drive the enemy out of the trees altogedier. Captain West?’
‘Sir!’ Francis West, the commander of the Grenadier Company, was senior to Morris and so was in charge of the two companies.
‘You may advance.’
‘At once, sir,’ West said. ‘Detachment! Forward!’
‘Im in your hands, Mother,’ Hakeswill said under his breath as the two companies began their advance. ‘Look after me now! Oh God in his heaven, but the black bastards are firing at us. Mother! It’s your Obadiah here, Mother!’
‘Steady in the line!’ Sergeant Green’s voice called. ‘Don’t hurry! Keep your ranks!’
Morris had discarded his horse and drawn his sabre. He
felt distinctly unwell. ‘Give them steel when we get there,’ he called to his company.
‘We should give the buggers some bleeding artillery,’ someone muttered.
‘Who said that?’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Keep your bleeding tongues still!’
The first balls were whistling past their ears now and the crackle of the enemy’s musketry filled the night. The Tippoo’s men were firing from the aqueduct’s embankment and the flames of their fusillade sparked bright against the dark background of the tope. The two companies instinctively spread out as they advanced and the corporals, charged to be file-closers, bawled at them to close up. The ground was night dark, but the skyline above the trees still showed clearly enough. Lieutenant Fitzgerald glanced behind once and was appalled to see that the western sky was still touched by a blazing streak and he knew that crimson glow would silhouette the company once it climbed the embankment, but there was no going back now. He stretched his long legs, eager to be first into the enemy lines. Wellesley was advancing behind the companies and Fitzgerald wanted to impress the Colonel.
The musketry fire blazed along the embankment’s lip, each shot a spark of brightness that glowed briefly in the dark smoke, but the fire was wildly inaccurate for the attackers were still in the night-shadowed low ground and concealed by the defenders’ own powder smoke. Far off to their left other battalions were assaulting the northern stretch of the embankment and Fitzgerald heard a cheer as those men charged home, then Captain West gave the order to charge and the men of the 33rd’s two flank companies let loose their own cheer as they were released from the leash.
They ran hard towards the embankment. Musket balls whipped overhead. All the redcoats wanted now was to get this attack over and done. Kill a few bastards, loot a few bodies, men get the hell back to the camp. They cheered as
they reached the embankment and clambered up its short steep slope. ‘Kill them, boys!’ Fitzgerald shouted as he reached the crest, but there was suddenly no enemy there, only a still stretch of dark gleaming water and, as the attackers joined him, they all checked rather than plunge into the aqueduct.
A blast of musketry erupted from the farther bank. The Light Company, poised on the lip of the western bank, was silhouetted against the remnants of the daylight while the Tippoo’s men were shrouded by the tope’s, night-dark trees.
Redcoats fell as the bullets thumped home. The aqueduct was only about ten paces wide and, at that range, the Mysorean infantry could not miss. One man was lifted right off his feet and thrown back onto the ground behind the embankment. Rockets slashed across the dark water, their fiery trails slicing just inches above the twin embankments. For a few seconds no one knew what to do. A man gasped as a rocket snatched off his foot, then he slid down into the weed-thick water where his blood swirled dark. Some redcoats fired back at the trees, but they fired blind and their bullets hit nothing. The wounded stumbled back down the embankment, the dead twitched as they were struck by bullets, while the living were dazed by the noise and dazzled by the rockets’ dreadful red tails. Captain Morris stared in confusion. He had somehow not expected to cross the aqueduct. He had thought the trees were on this side of the water and he did not know what to do, but then Lieutenant Fitzgerald gave a shout of defiance and jumped down into the waterway. The black water came up to his waist. ‘Come on, boys! Come on! There’s not so many of the bastards!’ He waded forward, his naked sabre bright in the starlight. ‘Let’s flush them out! Come on, Havercakes!’