Evolution of the drift velocity V^z along the mid-point of the current sheet (x = 0.5) in the direction transverse to the current sheet (z-direction) during the linear phase (time-interval [t₀,t₁] for which the growth rate is derived in Fig. 3). The different panels correspond to different reconstruction schemes (see legends) and a resolution of p = 25.6 numerical zones per transverse size of the current sheet. The assumed width of the resistive layer L_R employed for the analysis in Sect. 2.2 is indicated by the vertical gray lines in the background; each of these lines denotes the limits of the computational zones in the z-direction. The growth of the velocity component V^z is strongly suppressed for higher-order (MP) reconstruction methods and is significantly larger when using the MC reconstruction (we note the different scale for the lower panel).