The spark flashed and the powder fizzed, but the paper did not catch fire, so Sharpe had to tear another cartridge open for more gunpowder. He placed it in the lock, cocked the gun again, and again pulled the trigger.
This time the paper flickered with small fizzing blue flames, and he took it from the lock, held it downwards so the flames would grow as they climbed the paper, and when it was really burning and the first bats were flickering round his head, he put the paper down among the loose straw. He waited as the flames caught hold, as the gunpowder in the kindling sparked and hissed, and then the fire reached some lamp oil and the flames leaped up the pile of kindling and the smoke began to curl in the dark space that was filling with panicked bats.
Sharpe forced himself through the hole in the wall, tearing his coat on a protruding stone. The smoke had thickened with incredible speed and was boiling out over his head, while bats were all around him and he panicked.
He reached for the ivy and let himself fall. For a second he hung there, staring up at the mix of bats and smoke pouring from the gap in the wall, and then a Frenchman shouted and a rifle cracked, then another, and the ivy was peeling off the wall, lowering Sharpe, and he just let go and fell heavily onto the turf. A pistol cracked and a puff of dust showed a couple of feet to his right where the small bullet struck the ground.
He was winded, but there did not seem to be any bones broke, His belly hurt. He picked up his rifle and half ran, half limped towards the village. A dozen rifles fired, then some muskets flamed and Sharpe heard the balls crack against stone, and then he was safe in the ditch and Pat Harper leaned down and hauled him up into the back yard where the Light Company sheltered.
“Let them piss on that fire, eh, sir?” Harper said, nodding towards the hole in the fort wall that now spewed a thick grey smoke.
“Best thing to do with rats,” Mister MacKeon said, “burn them out.”
Sharpe cupped his hands. “Harry?”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Price answered.
“Redcoats in two ranks, if you please. Muskets loaded and bayonets fixed.
Pat?”
“Sir?”
“Rifles to follow me. We charge on my command, Mister Price.”
“Yes, sir!”
So long as the buggers did not extinguish the fire, Sharpe thought, he still had a chance of winning this fight.
The smoke sifted up through the floorboards, and for a short while no one noticed, but then Sergeant Coignet raised the alarm and by then the lowest wooden floor was thick with smoke, though there were no flames to be seen.
“Water!” Pailleterie shouted. “Get it from the river! Make a chain!
Sergeant Gobel! A dozen men to keep the horses quiet! Make a chain! Use your hats!”
A chain of men could pass colbacks filled with river water up from the bank, through the arch and up the ladder to the first floor, but as soon as the first men reached the bank and leaned down to scoop up water, a rifle fired, and then another, and there were two dead hussars, and a third man was wounded. It took Sergeant Coignet valuable moments to reorganise his human chain to scoop water from the farther side of the bridge, where the stone of the northernmost arch would protect his men, and by then it was already too late.
The fire had not yet broken through the floorboards, but it was feasting on the short dry timbers that supported the floor, and the curved barrel-roof of the store-room made a natural horizontal chimney that filled with air and dying bats to fan the flames and drive the fire around the corner of the fort, and the smoke thickened so that when the first water came up the ladder, and there was precious little of it for the fur hats leaked atrociously, Pailleterie could only throw the water into the choking smoke and hope that it did some good. He could hear the fire roaring like a furnace beneath his feet and he could feel the heat. One of the collapsible canvas buckets with which the hussars watered their horses came up the human chain and Pailleterie hurled its contents into the smoke.