The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [295]
The dogs, both pets and pariahs, slumbered on uneasily, tongues lolling in the great heat, while the Collector disappeared on his way towards the rattle of rifle fire and the crashing of artillery. A little later, if they had had the energy to lift their heads from their paws, they might have seen him coming back. He looked just the same, more or less, though now he was walking more quickly and did not pause to notice them. The pink rose he was wearing had withered in his buttonhole in the few minutes it had been exposed to the hot wind and sun.
He went straight to his study when he got back to the Residency, closed the door and drank off a glass of brandy. He had done what he had intended: he had made a confident tour of the Cutcherry buildings; he had spoken encouragingly to the men firing through the windows from behind stacks of records and documents (an excellent protection from musket fire); he had visited the half dozen wounded who had been removed to the Magistrate’s office until they could be conveyed to the library in the Residency, where the hospital had been provisionally established; he had even gone outside to speak to the men at the rampart. But now he needed to marshal his courage again.
He was standing at his desk with the empty glass in his hand when a stray musket ball ricocheted off “ The Spirit of Science Conquers Ignorance and Prejudice” by the window. He instantly dropped to the floor in fear. He could hear that musket ball droning about the room, lethally bisecting it again and again like a billiard ball going from one cushion to another. He remained crouching there for a long time before he was able to convince himself that it was quite impossible, physically speaking, scientifically speaking, for a musket ball to go on and on ricocheting like that in a rectangular room; it could only be his imagination. So he forced himself to stand up again and suffered no ill-effects; a small but significant triumph for the scientific way of looking at things. Presently he felt sufficiently restored to make another confident sortie, this time to encourage the men in Dunstaple’s battery.
12
“Save, Lord, or else we perish. The living, the living, shall praise thee...”
At the banqueting hall the little garrison was standing to arms, waiting for the enemy assault. Loaded Enfield rifles had been propped against the balustrade and the cannon loaded with canister. While they waited Harry had been giving some elementary instruction in the use of the Enfield rifle to Fleury, Barlow and Vokins; he had explained that this rifle was the 1853 model, three grooves, with a cartridge of two and a half drams exploded by percussion cap. To hit a human figure at 100 yards you aim at the waist. At 150 yards raise the sliding bar, raise the sight and aim with the 200 yards point at the thigh. At 200 yards aim at the waist with the 200 yards point. At 300 yards aim at the waist with the three hundred yards point. Any questions? No, there did not seem to be any questions. Vokins’s teeth were chattering in spite of the heat and he looked like someone in whose mind thighs and waists and percussion caps and sliding bars had become inextricably entangled. Fleury, his mind a hopeless jumble of figures, was wool-gathering again, though trying to look politely interested, and was vaguely trying out various poses in his mind for daguerrotypes to appear in the Illustrated London News. Only Barlow seemed to have been taking an intelligent interest.
“How do you judge distances?” asked Harry disagreeably. “I suppose you all must know since nobody had any questions.” They all looked chastened so Harry explained. At 1300 yards good eyesight can distinguish infantry from cavalry. A single individual detached may be seen at 1000 yards but his head does not appear as a round ball until 700 yards, at which distance white cross-belts and white trousers may be seen. At 500 yards the face may be seen as a light coloured spot and limbs, uniform and firelocks can