You’ll face a glacis rising to ten feet, with an eight counterscarp into the outer ditch. A width of twenty and a scarp often. That’s revetted with granite, by the way, like the rest of the damned place. Climb the scarp and you’re on a counterguard. They’ll be peppering you by now and you’ve got a forty foot dash to the next counterscarp.” The colonel was speaking with a grim relish, as if seeing the figures running and dropping through the enemy’s plunging fire. “That’s twelve feet, it’s flooded, and the enceinte height is twenty.”

“The width of that last ditch?” Sharpe was making notes.

“Sixteen, near enough.” Elphinstone shrugged. “We don’t think it’s flooded more than a foot or two.” Even if the naval

Though other officers did not understand Elphinstone’s language, they could understand the importance of what he was saying. The Teste de Buch might be an old fort, but it was a bastard; a killer.

“Weapons, sir?” Sharpe asked.

Elphinstone had no need to consult his notes. “They’ve got six thirty-six pounders in a semi-circular bastion that butts into the channel. The other guns are twenty-fours, wall mounted.”

Captain Horace Bampfylde had listened to the technical language and understood that a small point was being scored against him. Now he smiled. “We should be grateful it’s not a tenaille trace.”

Elphinstone frowned, realizing that Bampfylde had understood all that had been said. “Indeed.”

“No lunettes?” Bampfylde’s expression was seraphic. “Caponiers?”

Elphinstone’s frown deepened. “Citadels at the corners, but hardly more than guerites.”

Bampfylde looked to Sharpe. “Surprise and speed, Major! They can’t defend the complete enceinte, and the frigate will distract them!” So much, it seemed, for the problems of capturing a fortress. The talk moved on to the proposed naval operations inside the Bassin d’Arcachon, where more chasse-marees awaited capture, but Sharpe, uninterested in that part of the discussion, let his thoughts drift.