"It's more than the bastard deserves," Sharpe replied, but without much conviction, merely in the tone of a man making conversation to pass the time.

"It's still a shitheap. How in Christ's name did they ever find the place? That's what I want to know. God's in his heaven, but we're a million miles from anywhere on earth, so we are!"

"I suppose a ship was off course and bumped into the bloody place."

Harper fanned his face with the brim of his broad hat. "I wish they'd bring the bloody mules. I'm dying of the bloody heat, so I am. It must be a fair bit cooler up in them hills."

"If you weren't so fat," Sharpe said mildly, "we could walk."

"Fat! I'm just well made, so I am." The response, immediate and indignant, was well practiced, so that if any man had been listening he would have instantly realized that this was an old and oft-repeated altercation between the two men. "And what's wrong with being properly made?" Harper continued. "Mother of Christ, just because a man lives well there's no need to make remarks about the evidence of his health! And look at yourself! The Holy Ghost has more beef on its bones than you do. If I boiled you down I wouldn't get so much as a pound of lard for my trouble. You should eat like I do!" Patrick Harper proudly thumped his chest, thus setting off a seismic quiver of his belly.

"It isn't the eating," Sharpe said. "It's the beer."

"Stout can't make you fat!" Patrick Harper was deeply offended. He had been Sharpe's sergeant for most of the French wars and then, as now, Sharpe could think of no one he would rather have beside him in a fight. But in the years since the wars the Irishman had run a hostelry in Dublin, "and a man has to be seen drinking his own wares," Harper would explain defensively, "because it gives folks a confidence in the quality of what a man sells, so it does. Besides, Isabella likes me to have a bit of flesh on my bones. It shows I'm healthy, she says."