"Sergeant?" Tubbs called after Harper who was reluctantly going down the steps from the firestep. "We might save a few bottles, perhaps? For medicinal reasons?" Tubbs made the suggestion nervously, glancing at Sharpe. "Does not the good book entreat us to 'take a little wine for thy stomach's sake'?" Tubbs pleaded.

"Two dozen bottles in my room, Sergeant, " Sharpe said, "for my tummy's sake."

"Two dozen it is, sir, " Harper said and went on down the stairs.

"Only two dozen?" Tubbs pleaded.

"When it comes to bottles of liquor, Major, " Sharpe said, "Sergeant Harper can't count. There'll be six dozen in my room, and as many again hid somewhere else, but if I don't make a point of breaking the rest then the boys will think this is a public house. It ain't. We've got work to do."

Or rather Major Tubbs had work, and to do it he had three Spanish labourers and one Scotsman, MacKeon, who was a Foreman of the Ordnance, which meant that MacKeon would do the work and Tubbs would take the credit for it, for that was the way of the world. Not that much credit would ensue from MacKeon's efforts, but in their small way they would help win the war against the French who, a month before, had been whipped at Salamanca. Arthur Wellesley, now the Viscount Wellington of Talavera, had bamboozled them, dazzled them, unbalanced them and then half destroyed them. So the frogs had gone. They had marched north with their tails between their legs, and the French garrison of the tiny riverside fort of San Miguel had run with them, but they had left behind, locked in the fort's store-room, close to five thousand muskets.