Then the light went out. „Come on!” Sharpe called to Pendleton and the two of them ran further to their left. They could hear the French shouting, one man gasping and moaning, then a louder voice calling for silence. „Down!” Sharpe whispered and the two went to ground and Sharpe began the laborious business of loading his two rifles in the dark. He saw a small flame burning back where he and Pendleton had been and he knew that the wadding from one of their rifles had started a small grass fire. It flickered for a few seconds, then he saw dark shapes nearby and guessed that the French infantry who had been guarding the gun were out looking for whoever had just fired the shots, but the searchers found nothing, trampled the small fire dead and went back to the trees.
There was another pause. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices and reckoned the French were discussing what to do next. The answer came soon enough when he heard the trampling of feet and he deduced that the infantry had been sent to scour the nearer hillside, but in the dark they merely blundered through the ferns and cursed whenever they tripped on rocks or became entangled by gorse. Officers and sergeants snarled and snapped at the men who were too sensible to spread out and get lost or maybe ambushed in the darkness. After a while they trailed back to the trees and there was another long wait, though Sharpe could hear the clatter of the howitzer’s rammer as it shoved and scraped the next shell home.
The French probably thought their attackers were gone, he decided. No shots had come for a long time and their own infantry had made a perfunctory search, and the French were probably feeling safer, for the gunner foolishly tried to revive the portfire by whipping it back and forth a couple of times until its tip glowed a brighter red. He did not need the extra heat to light the reed in the touchhole, but rather to see the touch-hole, and it was his death sentence for he then blew on the tip of the slow match held in the portfire’s jaws, and either Harris or Tongue shot him, and even Sharpe jumped with surprise when the rifle shot blistered the night and he had a glimpse of flame far off to his right, and then the French infantry were forming ranks, the fallen portfire was snatched up and, just as the howitzer fired, so the muskets hammered a crude volley in the direction of Tongue and Harris.
And the grass fires started again. One sprang up just in front of the howitzer and two smaller fires were ignited by the wadding of the French muskets. Sharpe, his eyes still dazzled by the gun’s big flame, nevertheless could see the crew heaving at the wheels and he slid the rifle forward. He fired, changed weapons and fired again, aiming at the dark knot of men straining at the nearest gun wheel. He saw one fall away. Pendleton fired. Two more shots came from the right and the grass fires were spreading and then the infantry realized that the flames were illuminating the gunners, making them targets, and they frantically stamped out the small fires, but not before Pendleton had fired his second rifle and Sharpe saw another gunner spin away from the howitzer, then a last shot came from Tongue or Harris before the flames were at last extinguished.
Sharpe and Pendleton went back fifty paces before reloading. „We hurt them that time,” Sharpe said. Small groups of Frenchmen, emboldening themselves with loud shouts, darted forward to search the slope again, but again found nothing.
He stayed another half-hour, fired four more times and then went back to the hilltop, a journey which, in the dark, took almost two hours, though it was easier than going down for there was just enough light in the sky to show the outline of the hill and the broken stub of the watch-tower. Tongue and Harris followed an hour later, hissing the password up at the sentry before coming excitedly into the fort where they told the tale of their exploit.