SHARPE’S REGIMENT

Harper had the gun at his shoulder. He saw the officer waving his sword, urging his muddy troops on, but not dirtying himself with the pursuit, and Harper knew where the bullet would go. He knew precisely where it would go. He smiled, tightened his finger, fired, and saw the officer fall back with the bullet exactly where Harper had aimed it. One dead, one wounded, and he was reloading again, and the militia, who had never seen how Wellington’s men fought, were getting a taste of it in this Essex marsh.

‘Patrick!’

Grinning, letting them off his hook, Harper slid backwards to the shallow water, turned, and with the carbine and ramrod held in separate hands, ran towards Sharpe. The punt was afloat in a pool among the reeds, and Sharpe gestured at him to get in.

The Irishman’s weight momentarily grounded the punt, but Sharpe heaved with a paddle in the mud, and they headed towards the open river that flowed past the marker pole. A bullet snickered through the rushes to their right, another splashed overhead, and Sharpe grabbed a handful of the tough plants at the channel’s edge and dragged the punt forward until the bow was suddenly snatched eastwards by the violent current, he gave the boat one last heave with the paddle, and they were out in the wide River Crouch and being swept towards the sea that must be, Sharpe knew, some two miles eastwards.

‘Paddle!’ Both men, kneeling in the flat craft, dug their blades into the water and drove the punt towards the northern bank.

There was a shout behind them, a yell of anger, and Harper muttered the prayer that all sailors and soldiers said before the enemy fired. ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful.’

The volley made the water dance about them, small spouts of white that rose and fell, and the two men pumped their arms and drove the punt through the ripples of the gunshots, out into midstream, and Sharpe heard the rattle of ramrods behind him.

‘They’re slow,’ Harper said scornfully. ‘We’d have had two shots off by now.’

‘They can still kill us. Paddle!’

Harper paddled, his strength driving his side of the punt faster than Sharpe’s. Water splashed cold on them from their clumsy strokes. ‘I’m afraid I killed one of the buggers, sir!’

‘You what?’

‘I killed one, sir! It was an accident, of course. Didn’t mean to.’

Sharpe did not seem to care. ‘Bugger them. They shouldn’t try and kill us.’ He said it angrily and dug his paddle in the water just as the second volley came from the southern bank.

The second volley was more ragged, the splashes wider spaced because the punt was now more than a hundred paces away from the shore, but one bullet struck a thwart, drove splinters up, then whined into the darkness. Harper laughed. ‘Lucky bloody shot.’

‘Paddle!’

They had been carried down river and were now opposite Foulness, and Sharpe could see, dark on the southern bank, the shapes of men and a single horseman. He saw, too, the sudden sparkle of muskets, muzzle flashes that were reflected in long, shimmering lights on the water, but again the volley went wide, fired at hopeless range, then the bow of the punt bumped on the northern shore and Harper, carbine in his hand, jumped onto the bank and hauled the boat up.

Sharpe, carrying the bundle, followed and found Harper kneeling on the sea-dyke, aiming the carbine.

‘Don’t waste the shot,’ Sharpe said.

‘This one won’t be wasted, sir!’ Harper aimed at a horseman on the southern bank, and pulled the trigger. The bullet whipped away over the Crouch, then Harper, standing to his full height, filled his lungs and gave a yell that filled the night above the moon-silvered river and marsh. ‘That’s from Ireland, you bugger!’

There was a yelp from Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, though whether from wounded pride or flesh, Sharpe could not tell. Then, laughing because of Harper’s challenge, he turned and led the big Sergeant inland.

They had escaped Foulness, but not Colonel Girdwood’s pursuit. Sharpe knew that even now horsemen would be riding towards the first ford or bridge over the Crouch and that he and Harper must move and move fast.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *