on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Sharpe had already taken the three jewels from Sajit and he added those
to the pouch of gold, then went to the porch where Ahmed stood guard.
No one seemed to have been alarmed by the shot, but it was not wise to
linger.
“I’ve got you some gold, Ahmed,” Sharpe said.
“Gold!”
“You know that word, you little bugger, don’t you?” Sharpe grinned,
then took Clare’s hand and led her into the shadows. A dog barked
briefly, a horse whinnied from the cavalry lines, and afterwards there
was silence.
CHAPTER 7
Dodd needed to practise with the rifle and so, on the day that the
British reached the top of the high escarpment, he settled himself in
some rocks at the top of the cliff and gauged the range to the party of
sepoys who were levelling the last few yards of the road. Unlike a
musket, the rifle had proper sights, and he set the range at two
hundred yards, then propped the barrel in a stone cleft and aimed at a
blue-coated engineer who was standing just beneath the sweating sepoys.
A gust of wind swept up the cliffs, driving some circling buzzards high
up into the air.
Dodd waited until the wind settled, then squeezed the trigger.
The rifle slammed into his shoulder with surprising force. The smoke
blotted his view instantly, but another billow of wind carried it away
and he was rewarded by the sight of the engineer bent double. He
thought he must have hit the man, but then saw the engineer had been
picking up his straw hat that must have fallen as he reacted to the
close passage of the spinning bullet. The engineer beat dust from the
hat against his thigh and stared up at the drifting patch of smoke.
Dodd wriggled back out of view and reloaded the rifle. It was hard
work. The barrel of a rifle, unlike a musket, had spiralling grooves
cast into the barrel to spin the bullet. The spin made the weapon
extraordinarily accurate, but the grooves resisted the rammer, and the
resistance was made worse because the bullet, if it was to be spun by
the grooves, had to fit the barrel tightly. Dodd wrapped a bullet in
one of the small greased leather patches that gave the barrel purchase,
then grunted as he shoved the ramrod hard down. One of the Mahratta
cavalrymen who escorted Dodd on his daily rides shouted a warning, and
Dodd peered over the rock to see that a company of sepoy infantry was
scrambling to the top of the slope. The first of them were already on
the plateau and coming towards him. He primed the rifle, settled it on
the makeshift fire step again and reckoned that he had not allowed for
the effect of the wind on the last bullet. He aimed at the sepoys’
officer, a man whose small round spectacles reflected the sun, and,
letting the barrel edge slightly windwards, he fired again.
The rifle hammered back onto his shoulder. Smoke billowed as Dodd ran
to his horse and clambered into the saddle. He slung the rifle, turned
the horse and saw that the red-coated officer was on the ground with
two of his men kneeling beside him. He grinned. Two hundred paces!
A wild volley of musketry followed the Mahratta horsemen as they rode
westwards towards Gawilghur. The balls rattled on rocks or whistled
overhead, but none of the cavalrymen was touched. After half a mile
Dodd stopped, dismounted and reloaded the rifle. A troop of sepoy
cavalry was climbing the last few yards of the road, the men walking as
they led their horses around the final steep bend. Dodd found another
place to rest the rifle, then waited for the cavalry to approach along
the cliff’s edge.
He kept the sights at two hundred yards. He knew that was very long
range, even for a rifle, but if he could hit at two hundred yards then
he was confident of killing at a hundred or at fifty.
“Sahib!” The commander of his escort was worried by the more numerous
sepoy cavalry who had now mounted and were trotting towards them.