Ferragus towered over Sharpe. "Your work is done here, Captain. The tower is no more, so you may go."

Sharpe stepped back out of the huge man's shadow, sideways to get around him and then went to the shrine and heard the distinctive sound of the volley gun's ratchet scraping as Harper cocked it. "Careful, now," the Irishman said, "it only takes a tremor for this bastard to go off and it would make a terrible mess of your shirt, sir." Ferragus had plainly turned to intercept Sharpe, but the huge gun checked him.

The shrine door was unlocked. Sharpe pushed it open and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight to the shrine's black shadows, but then he saw what was inside and swore.

He had expected a bare country shrine like the dozens of others he had seen, but instead the small building was heaped with sacks, so many sacks that the only space left was a narrow passage leading to a crude altar on which a blue-gowned image of the Virgin Mary was festooned with little slips of paper left by desperate peasants who came to the hilltop in search of a miracle. Now the Virgin gazed sadly on the sacks as Sharpe drew his sword and stabbed one. He was rewarded by a trickle of flour. He tried another sack further down and still more flour sifted to the bare earth floor. Ferragus had seen what Sharpe had done and harangued Ferreira who, reluctantly, came into the shrine. "The flour is here with my government's knowledge," the Major said.

"You can prove that?" Sharpe asked. "Got a piece of paper, have you?"

"It is the business of the Portuguese government," Ferreira said stiffly, and you will leave."

"I have orders," Sharpe countered. "We all have orders. There's to be no food left for the French. None." He stabbed another sack, then turned as Ferragus came into the shrine, his bulk shadowing the doorway. He moved ominously down the narrow passage between the sacks, filling it, and Sharpe suddenly coughed loudly and scuffed his feet as Ferreira squeezed into the sacks to let Ferragus past.