The skirmishing company of his own regiment ran across the bridge. Three men could just go abreast on the narrow ribbon of stone and Dulong was in the very first rank. The ordenanqa roared their defiance and a volley blasted from the closest earthwork. Dulong was hit in the chest, he heard the bullet strike his new medal and then distinctly heard the snap as a rib broke and he knew the bullet must be in his lung, but he felt no pain. He tried to shout, but his breath was very short, yet he began hauling at the thorns with his gloved hands. More men came, cramming themselves on the bridge’s thin roadway. One slipped and fell screaming into the white tumult of the Misarella. Bullets smacked into the Forlorn Hope, the air was nothing but smoke and splintering noise and hissing bullets, but then Dulong managed to pitch a whole section of the abattis into the river and there was a gap wide enough to let a man through and big enough to save a trapped army, and he staggered through it, saber raised, spitting bubbles of blood as his breath labored. A huge shout came from behind him as the first of the support battalions ran toward the bridge with fixed bayonets. Dulong’s surviving men cleared away the last of the thorn abattis, a dozen dead voltigeurs were unceremoniously kicked over the roadway’s edge into the ravine, and suddenly the Saltador was dark with French troops. They screamed a war cry as they came and the ordenanqa, most of whom were still reloading after trying to stop Dulong’s Forlorn Hope, now fled. Hundreds of men ran westward, climbing into the hills to escape the bayonets. Dulong paused by the nearest abandoned earthwork and there he bent over, his saber dangling by the cords tied to his wrist and a long dribble of mingled blood and saliva trickling from his mouth. He closed his eyes and tried to pray.
„A stretcher!” a sergeant shouted. „Make a stretcher. Find a doctor!” Two French battalions chased the ordenanqa away from the bridge. A few Portuguese still lingered on a high rocky bluff to the left of the road, but they were too far away for their musket fire to be anything except a nuisance and so the French let them stay there and watch an army escape.
For Major Dulong had prized open the last jaws of the trap and the road north was open.
Sharpe, up in the rough ground south of the Misarella, heard the furious musketry and knew the French must be assaulting the bridge and he prayed the ordenanqa would hold them, but he knew they would fail. They were amateur soldiers, the French were professional and, though men would die, the French would still cross the Misarella and once the first troops were over then the rest of their army would surely follow.
So he had little time in which to cross the river which tumbled white in its deep rocky ravine and Sharpe had to go more than a mile upstream before he found a place where they might just negotiate the steep slopes and rain-swollen water. The mule would have to be abandoned for the ravine was so precipitous that not even Javali could manhandle the beast down the cliff and through the fast water. Sharpe ordered his men to strip the slings off their rifles and muskets, then buckle or tie them together to make a long rope. Javali, eschewing such an aid, scrambled down to the Misarella, waded through and began climbing the other side, but Sharpe feared losing one of his men to a broken leg up in these hills and so he went more slowly. The men eased themselves down, using the rope as a support, then passed down their weapons. The river was scarcely a dozen paces across, but it was deep and its cold water tugged hard at Sharpe’s legs as he led the crossing. The rocks underfoot were slick and uneven. Tongue fell over and was swept a few yards downstream before he managed to haul himself onto the bank. „Sorry, sir,” he managed to say through chattering teeth as water drained from his cartridge box. It took over forty minutes for them all to cross the ravine and climb its other side where, from a peak of rock, Sharpe could just see the cloud-shadowed hills of Spain.