PART ONE "Welcome to San Miguel, Captain," Major Lucius Tubbs said to the officer beside him, "where God is in his heaven and all is well with the world." "Amen to that," said Sergeant Patrick Harper, standing behind the two officers who both ignored him. Major Tubbs, befitting his name, was a plump man with a cheerful, jowly face who now stood at the ramparts of the small fortress of San Miguel and bounced his hands on the parapet in time to some imaginary music. Next to him, and towering over the shorter Tubbs, was a lean and scarred man in a green Rifleman's jacket that was so patched with common brown cloth that from a distance it looked like a farm-labourer's coat. Beneath the patched coat he wore a pair of leather-trimmed cavalry overalls that had once belonged to a colonel of Napoleon's Imperial Guard, and at his side there hung a heavy-bladed cavalry sword that had killed the colonel. "We shall not be disturbed here, Sharpe," Tubbs said. "Pleased to hear that, sir." "The French are gone!" Tubbs waved a hand which suggested the French had simply evaporated.
