With a shout that filled the whole courtyard with its echo, Patrick Harper charged down the stone slope. He carried the great, bright-bladed axe, and in his veins there was the keening of a thousand Irish warriors. He was shouting in his Gaelic now, daring the French to have at him, and the leading Frenchmen dared not.

Harper was six feet four, a giant, and had muscles like a mainmast's cables. He did not attack cautiously, feeling for his enemy's weakness, but screamed his challenge at the full run. The axe took two men with its first blow then Harper turned the blade as though it weighed less than a sword, brought it back, blade dripping blood, while his voice, chanting its ancient language, drove the Frenchmen backwards.

A French captain, eager for glory and knowing that the ramp must be taken, lunged, and the axe-blade slit his belly open to the rain. Harper screamed triumph, defying the French, daring them to come to challenge his blade. He stopped a few feet from the bottom of the ramp, victorious, and the rain dripped pink from the broad-bladed axe that he held in his right hand. He laughed at the French.

"Sergeant!" Sharpe bellowed. "Patrick!"

The longboats, at last, were pushing back to the shore.

"Patrick!" Sharpe cupped his hands. "Come back!"

Harper shouldered the axe. He turned, disdaining to run, and walked slowly up the stone ramp to where Frederickson waited. He turned there and stared down into the courtyard. The officer with the percussion pistol, its barrel charged with powder from a dry horn, slipped a percussion cap over the gun's nipple, but Calvet, who recognized bravery when he saw it, shook his head. That Rifleman, Calvet thought, should be in the Imperial Guard.

"Citadels!" Sharpe's shout was sudden in the odd silence that followed Harper's lone attack. "Retreat! Retreat!"

The Riflemen who had guarded the extremities of the west wall scrambled from their strongholds and ran to the ladders.

Calvet, seeing it, knew his enemy was finished. "Charge!"

"Back! Back! Back!" Sharpe pushed his men away. Now the French could have the fort, but now came the worst moment, the difficult moment, the end of Sharpe's battle and the race for the boats.

The Riflemen had no time to queue at the ladders, instead they jumped from the walls and fell headlong in the sand. Sharpe waited, standing in one of the embrasures with his sword drawn. Harper came to his side but Sharpe snarled at him to go.

The French charged over the bodies of the dead. They wanted revenge, but found an empty rampart. Empty but for the one officer, sword drawn, whose face was like death. That face checked them for a few seconds, enough to let Sharpe's men scramble towards the sea's edge.

Then Sharpe turned and jumped.

The landing knocked all the breath from him. He pitched forward, rifle falling from his shoulder, and his face hit the wet sand.

A hand grabbed his collar and hauled him up. Harper's voice shouted, "Run!"

Sharpe's mouth was filled with gritty sand. He spat. He stumbled on the body of one of the Frenchmen dumped on this strip of sand the day before, sprawled, then ran again. His shako was gone. Frenchmen were standing on the ramparts above while to his right, from the north, the cavalry appeared.

The two longboats, oars rising and falling with painful slowness, inched towards the small breaking waves of the channel's beach. The first Riflemen were in the water, wading towards the boats, reaching for them.

Cornelius Killick, in the leading boat, bellowed an order and Sharpe saw the oars back, saw the clumsy boats swing, and he knew that Killick was turning the craft so that the wider sterns would face the shore.

"Form line!" Frederickson was shouting.

Sharpe swerved towards the shout, pawing sand from his eyes. Thirty Riflemen were bumping into a crude line at the very edge of the sea. Sharpe and Harper joined it.

"Front rank kneel! Present!" Frederickson, as if on a battlefield, faced the cavalry with two ranks that bristled with blades. The leading horseman, an officer, leaned from his saddle to swing his sabre, but the light blade clanged along the sword bayonets like a child's stick dragged on iron palings.

"Back! Back!" Sharpe shouted it.

The small line marched backwards, step by step, into the sea. Waves drove at their calves, their thighs, and the shock of the cold water reached for their groins.

Horsemen spurred into the sea. The horses, frightened by the blades and waves, reared.

"Come on, you bastards!" Killick shouted. "Swim!"

"Break ranks!" Sharpe shouted it. "Go!" He stayed as rearguard. His rifle encumbered him and he let it drop into the water.

A horseman swung a sabre at Sharpe and the Rifleman's long sword, used with both Sharpe's hands, broke the man's forearm. The Frenchman hissed with pain, dropped his sabre, then his horse jerked back towards dry land. Another horseman was twisting his sabre's point in a Rifleman's neck. There was blood, splashes, and more yellow-teethed horses plunging into the foam. Harper, still holding the axe, swung it at the horseman who sheered clumsily away while the body of a Rifleman was tugged by the tide. Harper dragged the body towards the boats, not knowing that the man was already dead.

The infantry had jumped from the ramparts and shouted at the cavalry to make way. Sharpe, teeth snarling, dared them to come. He taunted them. He stepped towards them, wanting one of them to try, just one.

"Sir!" a voice shouted from behind. "Sir!"

Sharpe stepped backwards and, seeing it, the French attacked.

A sergeant led them. He was old in war, toughened by years of campaigning, and he knew the Englishman would lunge.

Sharpe lunged. The Frenchman jerked his musket aside, parrying, and bellowed his victory as he thrust forward.

He was still shouting as Sharpe's sword, which had been twisted over the bayonet's stab, punctured his belly. Sharpe turned the blade, pushing, and the blood spewed into the breaking foam as the blade seemed to be swallowed by the big belly. Sharpe stepped back, jerked the sword, and the blade came free in a welter of new blood.

"Sir!"

He went backwards. Another horseman drove into the water and Sharpe swung his blade at the horse's head, it reared, then a man came from his other side, an officer in a darker uniform, and Sharpe turned, parried a clumsy thrust, and drew his sword back for the killing thrust.

"Not him! Not him!" Killick shouted it.

Sharpe checked his thrust.

Lassan, knowing that he would not die on this day of rain and savagery, lowered his sword into the water. "Go."

Sharpe went. He turned and plunged further into the sea. The longboats were already pulling away. Men clung to the transom of the nearest boat while other men, safely in the craft, reached hands and rifles towards him.

A pistol bullet spat in a plurne beside Sharpe's face. He was up to his chest now, half wading and half swimming, and he reached with his left hand, lunged, and caught an outstretched rifle barrel.

"Pull!" Killick shouted. "Pull!"

A last cavalryman charged into the sea, but an oarblade, slapped down on to the water, frightened the horse. The French, their muskets made useless by rain, could only watch.

Sharpe clung to the rifle with his left hand. The weapon's foresight dug into his palm. The sword in his right hand was dragging him down, as was the heavy scabbard. He kicked with his feet, water slopped into his mouth and he gagged.

"Pull! Pull! Pull!" Killick's voice roared over the clanking of the Thuella's windlass that dragged the anchor clear of the channel's silt. The sails were dropping into the small wind and the Thuella was stirring in the water.

The boats bumped on the ship's side and men pushed the Riflemen towards the deck. Someone took Sharpe's collar and hauled him dripping and heavy into the longboat. "Up!"

A ladder was built into the ship's side. Sharpe, unsteady in the rocking longboat, thrust his sword into his scabbard that squirted water as the blade went home. He reached for the ladder, climbed, then American hands hauled him on to the Thuella's deck. He had swallowed sea-water and, with a sudden spasm, he vomited it on to the scrubbed deck. He gasped for breath, vomited more, then lay, chest heaving, in the scuppers.

He heard cheers, German and Spanish and British cheers, even American cheers, and Sharpe twisted, looked through a gunport, and saw the coastline already sliding past. French gunners were wrestling the twelve-pounders through wet sand, but too late and to no avail. The longboats were being towed at ropes' ends, the Thuella's wet sails were filling with a new, easterly breeze, and the French were left behind, impotent.

They had escaped.