"We can manage them, sir," Hagman said. "Probably just a patrol. Harris! Watch left! You hurry on, sir." He spoke to Bullen again. "We know what we're doing and that pistol ain't much use." Bullen had been unaware of even drawing the pistol that had been a gift from his father. He fired it anyway and fancied that the small bullet struck a Frenchman, though it was far more likely the man had been thrown backwards by a shot from one of the riflemen. Another rifle fired. The greenjackets were going backwards, one man retreating while his partner kept watch. The French were firing back, but at too long a range. Their musket smoke made thicker patches of mist. By a miracle the voltigeurs were not following hard on Bullen's footsteps. They had expected to trap the picquet in the ruined barn and no one had given them orders to divert the attack eastwards, and that delay gave Bullen precious minutes. He realized that Hagman was right and that the riflemen did not need his orders so he ran past them to the bridge where Sergeant Read was waiting with the redcoats. Captain Slingsby was drinking from a canteen, but at least he was causing no trouble. The rifles fired from the mist and Bullen wondered if he should strike directly south, following the marshes by the stream, then he saw there were Frenchmen out in that open space and he ordered the redcoats across the bridge and back to the farm. The riflemen were hurrying back now, threatened by a new skirmish chain of voltigeurs who had come from the mist. Dear God, Bullen thought, but the Crapauds were everywhere!
"Into the farm!" he shouted at the redcoats. The farmhouse was a sturdy building that had been built on the western face of a small rise so that its front door was approached by stone steps and its windows were eight feet above the ground. A perfect refuge, Bullen thought, so long as the French did not bring artillery. Two redcoats hauled Captain Slingsby up the steps and Bullen followed into a long room, parlor and kitchen united in one, with the door and the two high windows facing down the track leading to the bridge. Bullen could not see the bridge in the mist, but he could see the riflemen retreating fast down the track and he knew the French could not be far behind. "In here!" he shouted at the green-jackets, then explored the rest of his makeshift fort. A second door and a single window faced the back where a yard was edged with other low-tiled buildings, while, at one end of the room, a ladder led to an attic where there were three bedrooms. Bullen split the men into six squads, one for each window facing the track, one for the door, and one each for the small rooms upstairs. He posted a single sentry at the back door, hoping the French would not reach the yard. "Break through the roof," he told the men he posted upstairs. The first voltigeurs were on the track now and their musket balls rattled on the farm's stone walls.
"There are men in the yard, sir," the sentry at the back door said.
Bullen thought he meant Frenchmen and snatched open the back door, but saw that one of the strangers was in the uniform of a Portuguese major and the others were all civilians, one of whom was the biggest man Bullen had ever seen. The Portuguese Major stared wide-eyed at Bullen, apparently as astonished to see Bullen as Bullen was to see him, then the Major recovered. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Lieutenant Bullen, sir."
"There are enemy over there," the Major said, pointing east, and Bullen cursed, for he had been thinking that perhaps his men could wade towards the river and so put themselves under the protection of the British gunboat that he had heard firing in the dawn. Now, it seemed, he was surrounded, so he had no choice but to make the best defense he could. "We will join you," the Major announced, and the five men came into the farmhouse where Bullen, on the Major's advice, put a handful of men in the eastern window to keep a look out for the enemy the Major had seen in the direction of the river. There was a clatter as shattered tiles cascaded from the roof where men broke through from the attic, then a bellow of gunfire as the Portuguese civilians fired at men coming from the east. Bullen turned to see what they were shooting at, and just then a volley crackled from the west and glass shattered in the windows and a redcoat spun back, a bullet in his lung. He began coughing up frothy blood. "Fire!" Bullen shouted.
Another man was hit, this time in the farm's doorway. Bullen went to a window, peered over the shoulder of a redcoat and saw Frenchmen running to the left, more going right and still more coming up the track. Muskets and rifles fired from the roof, but he did not see a single Frenchman fall. The long, low room echoed with the bangs of the guns, filled with smoke, and then the British and Portuguese cannon on the ridge added their own noise. The men in the back windows were firing as hard as the men in the front.
"They're working their way around the sides, sir," Read said, meaning that the French were going to the flanks of the farmhouse where no windows pointed.
"Kill them, boys!" Slingsby suddenly shouted. "And God save King George."
"Bugger King George," a redcoat muttered, then cursed because he had been struck by a splinter of wood driven from the window frame by a musket ball. "'Ware left, 'ware left!" a man shouted and three muskets banged together. Bullen dashed to the back door, peered through and saw powder smoke at the far end of the farmyard where cottages and cattle sheds huddled together. What the hell was happening? He had somehow hoped the French would stay on the track, attacking only from the west, but he realized now that had been a stupid hope. The voltigeurs were surrounding the farm and hammering it with musket fire. Bullen could sense panic in himself. He was twenty years old and over fifty men were looking to him for leadership, and so far he had given it, but he was being assailed by the sound of enemy musketry, the unending rattle of balls against the stone walls and by Captain Slingsby who was now on his feet and shouting at the men to look for the whites of the enemies' eyes.
Then the Portuguese Major solved some of his problems. "I'll look after this side," he told Bullen, pointing east. Bullen suspected there were fewer enemy out there, but he was grateful that he could forget them now. He looked back to the west which was taking the brunt of the fire, though most of it was being wasted on the stone walls. The problem, Bullen saw, lay north and south, for once the French realized that he had no guns covering the flanks of the building, they were bound to concentrate there.
"Loopholes in the gable ends, sir," Hagman suggested, intuitively understanding Bullen's problem, and he did not wait for the Lieutenant's answer, but went up the ladder to try and prise out the masonry at the gable ends of the roof. Bullen could hear the French shouting to each other now and, for want of anything better to do, fired his pistol through the open door, and then another gust of wind swirled more mist away and he saw, to his astonishment, that the whole valley beyond the bridge was filled with Frenchmen. Most were going away from him, advancing in a huge skirmish line towards the forts, and the gunners were firing at them from the hilltops and their shells exploded above the grassland, thickening the mist with their smoke and adding to the noise.
A redcoat fell back from a window, his skull spurting blood. Another was hit in the arm and dropped his musket which fired and the bullet hit a rifleman in the ankle. The noise outside was unceasing, the sound of the balls hitting the stone walls a devil's drumbeat, and Bullen could see the fear on the men's faces, and it was not helped by the fact that Slingsby had now drawn his sword and was shouting at the men to fire faster. The front of Slingsby's red coat was spattered with dribble and he was staggering slightly. "Fire!" he bellowed. "Fire! Give them hell!" He had an open canteen in his left hand and Bullen, suddenly angry, pushed the Captain aside so that Slingsby staggered and sat down. Another man was hit in the doorway, this one wounded in the arm by a splinter from a musket stock that had been struck by a bullet. Some men were refusing to go to the door now, and there was more than just fear on their faces, there was sheer terror. The sound of the guns was magnified by the room, the French shouts seemed horribly close, there were the incessant, deeper bangs of the big guns on the ridge, while in the farmhouse there was smoke and fresh blood and the beginnings of panic.