"I'll take a look at the bastard, " Sharpe said.

"That's all you need, isn't it? For me to say whether I've seen him or not?"

"Please, sahib, " Sajit said, and gestured at the tent's entrance.

Sharpe took off his hat so it would not tangle with the canvas, hoisted the tent's entrance as high as he could, then ducked low under the heavy brown cloth.

And knew instantly that it was a trap.

And understood, almost in the same instant, that he could do nothing about it.

The first blow struck his forehead, and his vision exploded in streaks of lightning and shuddering stars. He fell backwards, out into the sunlight and someone instantly grabbed one of his ankles and began pulling him into the deep shadow. He tried to kick, tried to push himself against the tent's sides, but another hand seized his second leg, another blow hammered the side of his skull and, mercifully, he knew nothing more.

"He's got a thick skull, our Sharpie, " Hakeswill said with a grin. He prodded Sharpe's prone body and got no reaction.

"Fast asleep, he is."

The Sergeant's face twitched. He had hit Sharpe with the heavy brassbound butt of a musket and he was amazed that Sharpe's skull was not broken. There was plenty of blood in his black hair, and he would have a bruise the size of a mango by nightfall, but his skull seemed to have taken the two blows without splintering.

"He always was a thick-headed bugger, " Hakeswill said.

"Now strip him."

"Strip him?" Kendrick asked.

"When his body is found, " Hakeswill explained patiently, 'if it is found, and you can't rely on bleeding blackamoors to do a proper job and hide it, we don't want no one seeing he's a British officer, do we?

Not that he is an officer. He's just a jumped-up bit of muck. So strip him, then tie his hands and feet and cover his eyeballs."

Kendrick and Lowry jerked and tugged Sharpe's coat free, then handed the garment to Hakeswill who ran his fingers along the hems.

"Got it! " he exulted when he felt the lumps in the cloth. He took out

H3

a knife, slit the coat and the two privates stared in awe as he eased the glittering jewels out of the tightly sewn seam. It was dark in the shadowed tent, but the stones gleamed bright.

"Get on with it! " Hakeswill said.

"The rest of his clothes off!»

"What are you doing?" Sajit had sidled into the tent and now stared at the jewels.

"None of your bleeding business, " Hakeswill said.

"You have jewels?" Sajit asked.

Hakeswill slid out his bayonet and stabbed it at Sajit, checking the lunge a fraction before the blade would have punctured the clerk's neck.

"The jewels ain't your business, Sajit. The jewels are my business. Your business is Sharpie, got it? I agreed to give him to your bleeding uncle, but I gets what he carries."

"My uncle will pay well for good stones, " Sajit said.

"Your Uncle Jama's a bleeding monkey who'd cheat me soon as fart at me, so forget the bleeding stones. They're mine." Hakeswill thrust the first handful into a pocket and started searching the rest of Sharpe's clothes. He slit open all the seams, then cut Sharpe's boots apart to discover a score of rubies hidden in the folded boot-tops. They were small rubies, scarce bigger than peas, and Hakeswill was looking for one large ruby.

"I saw it, I did. The bloody Tippoo had it on his hat.

Large as life! Look in his hair."

Kendrick obediently ran his fingers through Sharpe's blood-encrusted hair.

"Nothing there, Sarge."

"Turn the bugger over and have a look you know where."

"Not me!»

"Don't be so bloody squeamish! And tie his hands. Fast now! You don't want the sod waking up, do you?"

The clothes and boots yielded sixty-three stones. There were rubies, emeralds, sapphires and four small diamonds, but no large ruby.

Hakeswill frowned. Surely Sharpe would not have sold the ruby? Still, he consoled himself, there was a fortune here, and he could not resist putting all the stones together on a mat and staring at them.

"I do like a bit of glitter, " he breathed as his fingers greedily touched the jewels. He put ten of the smaller stones in one pile, another ten in a second, and pushed the two piles towards Kendrick and Lowry.

"That's your cut, boys.

Keep you in whores for the rest of your lives, that will."

"Perhaps I will tell my uncle about your stones, " Sajit said, staring at the jewels.

"I expect you will, " Hakeswill said, 'and so bleeding what? I ain't as dozy as Sharpie. You won't catch me."

"Then maybe I shall tell Captain Torrance." Sajit had positioned himself close to the entrance so that he could flee if Hakeswill attacked him.

"Captain Torrance likes wealth."

Likes it too much, Hakeswill thought, and if Torrance knew about the stones he would make Hakeswill's life hell until he yielded a share. The Sergeant's face juddered in a series of uncontrollable twitches.

"You're a bright lad, Sajit, ain't you?" he said.

"You might be nothing but a bleeding heathen blackamoor but you've got more than bullock dung for brains, ain't you? Here." He tossed Sajit three of the stones.

"That keeps your tongue quiet, and if it don't, I'll cut it out and have a feed on it. Partial to a plate of tongue, I am. Nice piece of tongue, knob of butter and some gravy.

Proper food, that." He pushed the rest of the stones into his pocket, then stared broodingly at Sharpe's naked trussed body.

"He had more, " Hakeswill said with a frown, "I know he had more." The Sergeant suddenly clicked his fingers.

"What about his pack?"

"What pack?" Lowry asked.

"The bleeding pack he carries, which he shouldn't, being an officer, which he ain't. Where's his pack?"

The privates shrugged. Sajit frowned.

"He had no pack when he came to the Captain's house."

"You're sure?"

"He came on a horse, " Lowry said helpfully.

"It were a grey horse, and he didn't have no pack."

"So where's the horse?" Hakeswill demanded angrily.

"We should look in its saddlebags!»

Lowry frowned, trying to remember.

"A bleeding kid had it, " he said at last.

"So where's the kid?"

"He ran off, " Sajit said.

"Ran off?" Hakeswill said threateningly.

"Why?"

"He saw you hit him, " Sajit said.

"I saw it. He fell out of the tent.

There was blood on his face."

"You shouldn't have hit him till he was right inside the tent, " Kendrick said chidingly.

"45

"Shut your bloody face, " Hakeswill said, then frowned.

"So where did the kid run?"

«Away,» Sajit said.

"I chased him, but he climbed onto the horse."

"Kid don't speak English, " Kendrick said helpfully.

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Cos I talked to him!»

"And who's going to believe a heathen black kid what don't speak English?" Lowry asked.

Hakeswill's face was racked by a quick series of twitches. He suspected he was safe. Lowry was right. Who would believe the kid?

Even so the Sergeant wished that Jama's men were coming earlier to fetch Sharpe. Jama himself had gone away from the camp, reckoning that if he was going to murder a British officer then it was best done a long way from the British army. Hakeswill had warned Jama not to expect Sharpe until the evening, and now he had to guard him until dusk.

"I told you to put a bandage on his eyes, " Hakeswill snapped.

"Don't want him to see us!»

"It don't matter if he does, " Kendrick said.

"He ain't going to see the dawn, is he?"

"Got more lives than a basketful of bleeding cats, that one, " Hakeswill said.

"If I had any sense I'd slit his throat now."

«No!» Sajit said.

"He was promised to my uncle."

"And your uncle's paying us, yes?"

"That too is agreed, " Sajit said.