Graham reached the breach's summit. His real goal was the wall to his left, but the summit of the breach felt like triumph enough and he rammed the flagstaff deep into the stones and dust. 'Lieutenant Graham now! he shouted exult-ingly, and a bullet immediately snatched him off the summit and hurled him back towards his men.
It was just then that the Tippoo's own volunteers struck. Sixty men swarmed up from behind the wall with sabres and muskets to meet the two Forlorn Hopes on the crest of the rubble breach. These were the Tippoo's best men, his tigers, the warriors of Allah who had been promised a favoured place in paradise, and they screamed with exultation as they attacked. They fired a musket volley as they climbed, then threw down the empty guns to attack the redcoats with bright curved swords. Musket barrels parried swords, bayonets lunged and were cut aside. Men swore and killed, swore and died. Some men fought with hands and boots, they gouged and bit each other as they grappled hand to hand on the dusty summit. One Bengali sepoy snatched up a fallen sword and carved a way to the foot of the wall where it climbed up from the breach to the northern ramparts. A Mysorean volunteer sliced at him, the sepoy instinctively parried, then cut down through the man's brass helmet so violently that the blade was buried and trapped in his enemy's skull. The Bengali left it there and, so fevered by battle that he did not realize he was weaponless, tried to scale the broken wall's flank to attack the defenders waiting on the firestep above. A musket shot from the top of the wall hurled him backwards and he slid, dying and bleeding, to lodge against the wounded Graham.
Baird was still west of the river. His job was not to die with the Forlorn Hopes, but to lead the main attack up the path they had cleared. That main attack now formed itself into two columns of platoons.
'Forward! Baird shouted, and led the twin columns towards the river. The ground ahead was being pitted by bullets as if an invisible hail fell. Behind him the drummer boys were sounding the advance while the engineers, laden with their fascines and ladders, walked alongside the platoons. Rockets screamed above Baird, their trails stitching ropes of smoke above the river. Men struggled hand to hand in the breach and the walls of the city spat flame through the churning rill of smoke.
Hell had come to Seringapatam and Baird hurried towards it.
Jesus Christ! Sharpe swore, for he could hear the sudden sound of battle swelling just beyond the western walls. Men were dying there. Men were storming a breach and the Tippoo's mine waited for them, its tons of powder cunningly crammed into a stone tunnel and poised to annihilate a whole brigade.
He stopped at a corner of the alley which led to the ancient gateway that had been filled with the explosives. He peered round the corner and saw Sergeant Rothiere and two Frenchmen from Gudin's battalion. All three were standing beside a barrel, staring up at the inner ramparts, and around the Europeans was a guard of a half-dozen jettis, all armed with muskets and swords. He ducked back and blew the priming out of his musket's pan. 'Only nine or ten of the bastards, he told Lawford, 'so let's give them a headache.
The rockets were stacked nose first on the cart so that their long bamboo tails stuck out towards the cart's handles. Sharpe went to the front of the cart, seized the thin boards that were painted with gods and elephants, and wrenched them off. They came away easily, their nails pulling out of the cart's sides. He beat off the last slivers of wood so that now there was no obstacle in front of the lethal cargo, then he turned the cart so that the rockets' tin cones were pointing towards the alley, though he took care to make sure that the cart and its contents were still hidden from the men waiting beside the mine's fuse.
Lawford said nothing, but just watched as Sharpe tore the fuse paper from one of the rockets. He twisted the paper into a spill, then pushed it into the musket's empty lock, cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. The powder-impregnated paper immediately caught the spark and started burning.
Sharpe dropped the musket and began lighting the fuses of the topmost row of rockets. The paper in his hand burned fiercely, but he managed to light eight of the weapons before he was forced to tear off another fuse and use it to light more. It was difficult to reach between the rocket's bamboo sticks, but he lit another ten while the first few fuses were fizzing and smoking. Lawford, seeing what Sharpe was doing, had taken the single page of the Bible from his pocket and twisted it into a spill that he used to light still more of the missiles. Then the first rocket to be lit suddenly coughed and spat out a gout of smoke and Sharpe immediately snatched up the cart's handles and shoved it around the corner so that the missiles were pointing straight down the alley. He crouched beside it, sheltered from the men in the alley by the corner of the building, and pulled his musket towards him. He used the musket to raise the cart's handles so that the vehicle's bed, and the rockets it contained, were horizontal.
The first rocket shuddered, then streaked away. The second went an instant later, then two more, and suddenly the whole cart was shaking and jerking as the rockets seethed away. A musket bullet hit the cart, another flicked dust from the corner of the building, but then there were no more shots, just shouts of terror as the missiles screamed between the alley's close walls. Some of the rockets had solid shot in their nose cones, others had small charges of black powder, and those now began to explode. A man screamed. More rockets exploded, the sound of their blasts cramming the alley with noise while the missiles' fierce trails filled the small street with smoke and flame. Sharpe waited till the last lit rocket flamed off the cart. 'Now's the hard bit, he warned Lawford. He replaced the priming in his musket with a pinch from a fresh cartridge, then seized the handcart and pushed it in front of him down the alley. At least thirty of the rockets had fired, and the alley was now an inferno of boiling smoke amongst which a handful of live rockets still ricocheted or spun crazily while the carcasses of the spent weapons burned bright in the gloom. Sharpe charged into that chaos, hoping that the half-loaded cart would serve as a shield if any man still lived in the alley.
Lawford charged with him. At least four men were still on their feet, while another had found shelter in a deep doorway, but they were all dazed by the violence of the rockets and half blinded by the thick smoke. Sharpe gave the cart a huge push to send it clattering towards them. One of the jettis saw the cart, dodged aside and charged at Sharpe with a drawn sabre, but Lawford shot him with his musket, taking the huge man in the throat as quickly and cleanly as if he had been a pheasant rising from a brake. The cart struck two of the standing men and sent them reeling. Sharpe stamped on the head of one and kicked the other in the crotch. He slammed the butt of the musket onto the back of a Frenchman's skull, then drove the weapon's muzzle deep into a jettfs belly and, as the man folded, he rammed the barrel into his face. The jetti screamed and staggered away, his hands clutched tight to one eye. Lawford had seized a fallen sword and sliced it savagely across another jettt s neck and was so inspired and elated by battle that he did not even feel any revulsion when the man's blood gushed out to hiss in the burning remnants of a rocket. Sergeant Rothiere was on the ground with one of his legs broken by the strike of a rocket, but he cocked his musket and aimed the gun at Lawford, then the Sergeant heard Sharpe behind him and tried to swing the musket round. Sharpe was too close and too fast. He felled Rothiere with a huge swing of his gun. He felt the butt break the Sergeant's skull. The gun was still loaded, so he reversed it and snarled a challenge as he peered through the choking smoke. He could see no danger now, just wounded men, dead men and flickering rocket cases. The mine's trail, a snaking length of quick fuse, had somehow escaped the fire of the rockets and lay discarded beside the toppled barrel in which Rothiere had been keeping a lit linstock. Sharpe moved towards the barrel, then heard the click of a gun being cocked.