"I lost one man dead."

Bampfylde shrugged. 'Scylla lost sixteen!" He said it as if to show that the Navy had taken the greater punishment.

"And the Marines?" Sharpe asked.

"Two men were scratched," Bampfylde said airily. "I always thought that clearing was the most likely place for an ambuscade, Sharpe. If they want to catch the likes of us, though, they'll have to show a livelier leg, what?" He laughed.

Bampfylde was a lying bastard, Sharpe thought. The two Riflemen sent by Frederickson had warned the Marines of the field guns, and Marine Captain Palmer had already thanked Sharpe for the service. But Bampfylde was speaking as though he had both detected and defeated the ambush, whereas the bloody man had done nothing. Bampfylde finished the wine. "Some of the Americans escaped?" He made the question sound like an accusation.

"So I believe." Sharpe did not care. Bampfylde had thirty American prisoners to send to England, and surely that was enough. The fort was taken, seamen from the Scylla had gone up channel to find the chasse-mare'es, and no man could have expected more of the day.

"So you'll go inland in the morning, Sharpe?" Bampfylde peered at Sharpe's head wound. "That's only a scratch, isn't it? Nothing to slow your reconnaissance?"

Sharpe did not reply. The fort was taken, Elphinstone would get the extra chasse-marees he needed, and the rest of this operation was farcical. Besides, he did not care whether Bordeaux was seething with discontent or not, he only cared that Jane should not die while he was away. Sharpe twisted round to look at the surgeon. "What's the first symptom of fever?"

The surgeon was helping himself to the wine. "Black-spot, Yellow, Swamp? Walcheren? Which fever?"

"Any fever," Sharpe growled.

The surgeon shrugged. "A heated skin, uncontrolled shivering, a looseness of the bowels. I can't say you have any pyretic symptoms yourself, Major."

Sharpe felt a horrid dread. For a second he felt a temptation to claim that his wound was incapacitating and to demand that he was returned to St Jean de Luz by the first ship.

"Well, Sharpe?" Bampfylde was offended that Sharpe had ignored his questions. "You will be marching inland?"

"Yes, sir." Sharpe stood. Anything rather than endure this bumptious naval captain. Sharpe would march inland, ambush the road, then return and refuse to have any further part of Bampfylde's madness. He knew he should dry his sword if it was not to have rust spots by morning, but he was too tired. He had not slept last night, he had marched all day, and he had taken a fortress. Now he would sleep.

He pushed past Bampfylde and went to find a cot in an empty room of the barracks. There, surrounded by the small belongings of a gunner evicted by his Green Jackets, he lay down and slept.

It was night now, a cold night. Sentries shivered on the ramparts and the flooded ditch had a skin of thin ice. The wind dropped, the rain had died, and the clouds thinned to leave a sky pricked by cold, white, winter-bright stars above the shimmering, glittering, ice-edged marshes.

Across those silent marshes, and from the silvered, steel-flat waters of Arcachon, a glimmer of mist was born. The mist skeined slow in a still night, a night of frost and white vapour beyond a fort where the blood spilt in a skirmish froze hard in the darkness.

Torches flared in the courtyard of the Teste de Buch. Breath smoked to vapour. Frost touched the cobbles white and rimed the gun barrels on the ramparts.

Bampfylde had ordered the Green Jackets to rest and replaced them with Marines whose scarlet coats and white crossbelts seemed bright in the starlit night.

Nine French prisoners, one of them the sergeant who had fired at Sharpe from the barrack roof, were locked in an empty ready magazine. They would be taken by Bampfylde's ships to the rotting prison hulks in the Thames or else to the new stone jail built by French prisoners in the wilds of Dartmoor.

The other prisoners were locked in the spirit store that Bampfylde had ordered emptied of its brandy and wine. Thirty men were crammed into a space fit for no more than a dozen. They were the Americans.

"At least they claim they're Americans!" Bampfylde, his bootless feet propped on an ammunition box, sat in front of a fire that had been lit in Lassan's old quarters. "But I'll warrant half of them are our deserters!"

"Indeed, sir." Lieutenant Ford knew that American ships, both Navy and civilian, were heavily crewed by seamen who had run from the harsh discipline of the Royal Navy.

"So have the bastards out one at a time." Bampfylde paused to bite into a chicken leg that should have been a part of Henri Lassan's dinner. He sucked the bone clean then tossed it at the fire. "And talk to them, Lieutenant. Use two reliable bo'sun's mates, understand me?"

"Aye aye, sir." Ford understood very well.

"Any man you believe is a deserter, put in a separate room. The real Americans can go back to the store."

"Aye aye, sir."

Barnpfylde poured more of the wine. It might be a young vintage, but it was very, very hopeful. He made a mental note to have all the crates shipped to the Vengeance. He had also found some fine crystal glasses, incised with a coat of arms, that would look very fine in his Hampshire house. "You think I'm being too particular with the American prisoners, Ford?"

Ford did. "They're all going to hang, sir."

"True, but it is important that they hang in the proper manner! We can't have a pirate flogged, can we? That would be most uncivil!" Barnpfylde laughed at his small jest. Those crewmen of the Thuella who were suspected of being British seamen and deserters would face the worst fate. They would be placed in a ship's boat and rowed past all the ships of Bampfylde's command. In front of each ship, under the gaze of the crews, they would be lashed with the cat o' nine tails as a visible, bloody warning of the price a deserter must pay. The knotted thongs would flay their skin and flesh to the bone, but they would be restored to consciousness before they were hanged from the Vengeance's yardarm. The others, the Americans, would be hanged ashore, without a flogging, as common pirates.

Lieutenant Ford hesitated. "Captain Frederickson, sir." he began nervously.

"Frederickson," Barnpfylde frowned. "That's the fellow with the beggar's face, yes?"

"Indeed, sir. He did say they were his prisoners. That he'd guaranteed them honourable treatment."

Barnpfylde laughed. "Perhaps he thinks they should be hanged with a silken rope? They are privateers, Ford, pirates! That makes them the Navy's business, and you will oblige Captain Frederickson to keep his opinions to himself Barnpfylde smiled reassurance at his lieutenant. "I shall talk to the American officers myself. Send me my bargemen, will you?"

The capture of Cornelius Killick had given Captain Barnpfylde a particular and keen pleasure. American sea-men had twisted the Royal Navy's tail, winning single-ship battles with contemptible ease, and men like Killick had become popular heroes to their countrymen. The news of his capture and ignominious death would teach the Republic that Britain could lash back when it so wished. Their Lordships of the Admiralty, Bampfylde knew, would be well pleased with this news. Not many enemies still defied Britain on the waves, and the downfall of even one, even though he be a common pirate, would be a rare victory these days.

"I am not," Cornelius Killick said when he was brought into Bampfylde's presence, "a pirate."

Bampfylde's fleshy face showed ironic amusement. "You're a common and vulgar pirate, Killick, a criminal, and you'll hang as such."

"I carry Letters of Marque from my government, and well you know it!" Killick, like Lieutenant Docherty, had been stripped of his sword and his hands were bound behind his back. The American was chilled to the bone, furious and helpless.

"Where," Bampfylde looked innocently at Killick, "are your Letters of Marque?"

"I got 'em, sir." Bampfylde's bo'sun produced a thick fold of papers that Killick had carried in a waterproof pouch on his belt. Bampfylde took, opened, and read the papers with scant interest. The Government of the United States, in accordance with the customary laws, gave permission to Captain Cornelius Killick to wage warfare on the enemies of the Republic wherever on the High Seas those enemies might be found, and extended to Captain Killick the full protection of the said Government of the United States.

"I see no Letters of Marque." Bampfylde threw the document on to the fire.

"Bastard." Killick, like every privateer, knew that such letters offered small protection, but no captain liked to lose his papers.

Bampfylde laughed. He was scanning the other papers that were certificates of American citizenship for the Thuella's crew. "A fanciful name for a pirate ship, Thuella?"

"It's Greek," Killick said scornfully, "and means storm-cloud."

"An American educated in the classics!" Bampfylde mocked the fine looking man. "What miracles this young century brings!"

Bampfylde's bo'sun, the man who governed the captain's private barge, elbowed Lieutenant Docherty in the ribs. "This one's no Jonathon, sir, he's a bloody Mick."

"An Irishman!" Bampfylde smiled. "Rebelling against your lawful King, are you?"

"I'm an American citizen," Docherty said.

"Not any longer." Bampfylde threw all the certificates on to the fire where they flared bright, then shrivelled. "I smell the whiff of the Irish bogs on you." Bampfylde looked back to Killick. "So where's the Thuella?"

"I told you."