"Jesus bloody wept!" Sharpe interrupted. "I can afford to lose a bloody sergeant who's got nothing better to do than blather on about a bloody bullock!"

"It was a valuable beast!" Harper protested. "Besides, we're lost. We've got nothing better to do than pass the time, sir."

Lieutenant Price had been at the rear of the column, but now joined his commanding officer at the front. "Are we lost, sir?"

"No, Harry, I came here for the hell of it. Wherever the hell this is." Sharpe stared glumly about the damp, bleak valley. He was proud of his sense of direction and his skills at crossing strange country, but now he was comprehensively, utterly lost and the clouds were thick enough to disguise the sun so that he could not even tell which direction was north. "We need a compass," he said.

"Or a map?" Lieutenant Price suggested happily.

"We've got a bloody map. Here." Sharpe thrust the balled-up map into the Lieutenant's hands. "Major Hogan drew it for me and I can't make head nor tail out of it."

"I was never any good with maps," Price confessed. "I once got lost marching some recruits from Chelmsford to the barracks, and that's a straight road. I had a map that time, too. I think I must have a talent for getting lost."

"My grand-da was like that," Harper said proudly. "He could get lost between one side of a gate and the other. I was telling the Captain here about the time he took a bullock up Slieve Snaght. It was dirty weather, see, and he was taking the short cut—

"Shut up," Sharpe said nastily.

"We went wrong at that ruined village," Price said, frowning over the creased map. "I think we should have stayed on the other side of the stream, sir." Price showed Sharpe the map. "If that is the village. Hard to tell really. But I'm sure we shouldn't have crossed the stream, sir."