Sharpe's Tiger Read Online Free PDF Page B

insisted.
    Morris held the flint in the palm of his right hand. “Looks like a chip of stone to me.”
    â€œCommon grit, sir,” Hakeswill said. “Common bloody grit, sir, no good to man or beast.”
    â€œMight I?” A new voice spoke. Lieutenant William Lawford had dismounted to join Morris and now, without waiting for his Captain’s permission, he reached over and took the flint from Morris’s hand. Lawford was blushing again, astonished by his own temerity in thus intervening. “There’s an easy way to check, sir,” Lawford said nervously, then he drew out his pistol, cocked it, and struck the loose flint against the pistol’s steel. Even in the day’s bright sunlight there was an obvious spark. “Seems like a good flint to me, sir,” Lawford said mildly. Ensign Fitzgerald, standing behind Lawford, gave Sharpe a conspiratorial grin. “A perfectly good flint,” Lawford insisted less diffidently.
    Morris gave Hakeswill a furious look then turned on his heel and strode back toward his horse. Lawford tossed the flint to Sharpe. “Make your gun ready, Sharpe,” he said.
    â€œYes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
    Lawford and Fitzgerald walked away as Hakeswill, humiliated, thrust the musket back at Sharpe. “Clever bastard, Sharpie, aren’t you?”
    â€œI’ll have the leather as well, Sergeant,” Sharpe said and, once he had the flint’s seating back, he called after Hakeswill who had begun to walk away. “Sergeant!”
    Hakeswill turned back.
    â€œYou want this, Sergeant?” Sharpe called. He took a chip of stone out of his pocket. He had found it when he had untied the rag from the musket’s lock and realized that Hakeswill had substituted the stone for the flint when he had pretended to inspect Sharpe’s musket. “No use to me. Sergeant,” Sharpe said. “Here.” He tossed the stone at Hakeswill who ignored it. Instead the Sergeant spat and turned away. “Thanks, Tom,” Sharpe said, for it had been Garrard who had supplied him with a spare flint.
    â€œWorth being in the army to see that,” Garrard said, and all around him men laughed to have seen Hakeswill and Morris defeated.
    â€œEyes to your front, lads!” Ensign Fitzgerald called. The Irish Ensign was the youngest officer in the company, but he had the confidence of a much older man. “Got some shooting to do.”
    Sharpe pushed back into his file. He brought up the musket, folded the leather over the flint, and seated it in the doghead, then looked up to see that the mass of the enemy was now just a hundred paces away. They were shouting rhythmically and pausing occasionally to let a trumpet sound or a drum flourish a ripple, but the loudest sound was the beat of their feet on the dry earth. Sharpe tried to count thecolumn’s front rank, but kept losing count as enemy officers marched slantwise across the column’s face. There had to be thousands of the tiger troops, all marching like a great sledgehammer to shatter the two-deep line of redcoats.
    â€œCutting it fine, aren’t we?” a man complained.
    â€œWait lads, wait,” Sergeant Green said calmly.
    The enemy now filled the landscape ahead. They came in a column formed of sixty ranks of fifty men, three thousand in all, though to Sharpe’s inexperienced eye it seemed as if there must be ten times that number. None of the Tippoo’s men fired as they advanced, but held their fire just as the 33rd were holding theirs. The enemy’s muskets were tipped with bayonets while their officers were holding deeply curved sabres. On they came and to Sharpe, who was watching the column from the left of the line so that he could see its flank as well as its leading file, the enemy formation seemed as unstoppable as a heavily loaded farm wagon that was rolling slowly and inexorably toward a flimsy fence.
    He could see the enemy’s faces now.