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The northern face of the ravine, which looked towards the unconquered I
Once in a while a man would fire a musket across the ravine, but the balls were wild at that long range, and the enemy fire, which had been heavy during the massacre on the western road, gradually eased off as both sides waited for the real struggle to begin.
Sharpe was halfway down the ravine, seated beneath a stunted tree on which the remnants of some red blossom hung dry and faded. A tribe of black-faced, silver-furred monkeys had fled the irruption of men into the rocky gorge, and those beasts now gathered behind Sharpe where they gibbered and screamed. Tom Garrard and a dozen men of the 33rd's Light Company had gathered around Sharpe, while the rest of the company was lower down the ravine among some rocks.
"What happens now?" Garrard asked.
"Some poor bastards have to get through that gate, " Sharpe said.
"Not you?"
"Ke
"And he bloody will, Tom. It ain't going to be easy getting through that gate." He touched the scorch mark on his cheek.
"That bloody hurts!»
Tut some butter on it, " Garrard said.
"And where do I get bleeding butter here?" Sharpe asked. He shaded his eyes and peered at the complex ramparts above the big gate, trying to spot either Dodd or Hakeswill, but although he could see the white jackets of the Cobras, he could not see a white man on the ramparts.
"It's going to be a long fight, Tom, " he said.
The British gu
The defenders kept firing, but their smoke obscured their aim and the small captured ca
Each successive shot splintered more wood and was greeted by an ironic cheer from the redcoats who watched from across the ravine. The gate was being demolished board by board, and at last a round shot cracked into its locking bar and the half-shattered timbers sagged on their hinges.
Colonel Ke
"You know Plummer?" he asked the man.
"Gu
"Find him, " Ke
"The passage ain't straight, " he explained to the aide.
"Get through the gate and we turn hard left. If our axe men can't deal with the other gates we'll need a gun to blow them in."
The aide climbed back up to the Outer Fort, looking for a gu
Ke
"If we put up enough fire, " Ke
Ke
"Forward!»
Ke
"Forward!»
Four hundred redcoats followed the Colonel up the narrow track that led to the I
Ca
"Give them fire! " an officer on the ravine's northern side shouted at the watching redcoats, and the men loaded their muskets and fired at the smoke-masked gatehouse. If nothing else, the wild fire might keep the defenders' heads down. Another ca
"Protect the sappers! " Ke
Facing Ke
"There it is!»
he shouted, and led a surge of men up the cobbled road towards the iron-studded timbers.
And hell was loosed.
The fire steps above the gateway passage were protected by the outer wall's high rampart, and Dodd's men, though they could hear the musket balls beating against the stones, were safe from the wild fire that lashed across the deep ravine. But the redcoats beneath them, the men following Colonel Ke
Ke