by Dudley Pope
Rennick was beginning to feel weary. From his bird’s-eye view he estimated he was more than two-thirds of the way up to San Antonio. The Jocasta should be leaving the lagoon and entering the channel by now. It was hopeless trying to look at his watch while still climbing, and he passed the word for a halt. The men could have a brief rest; he could check the time and hope the sergeant across the channel was doing the same. To the minute, Captain Ramage had said of the final attack; the difference of a minute between the assaults on San Antonio and El Pilar could lose all the surprise and cost lives.
He managed to make out the hands of the watch in the faint moonlight. Eleven minutes to go. Better wait at the top than here, he thought, and started off again, followed by his men. The path was smooth, slippery with sheep and goat droppings, and soon began to level out, still with the hill to the left. Then, with startling suddenness, Rennick found the castle towering above him: the path came out from beside a sheer outcrop of rock some five yards from the western side. He ducked back and then squatted down, peering upwards across the gap at the grey walls.
It was unlikely that they would be seen. A sentry leaning over this west corner and staring downward might spot them, but the chances were about the same as being hit by a bolt of lightning. He whispered an order to the Marine behind him and waited until he saw him pass it to the next man.
He moved slowly across the gap until he was against the wall of the castle, then pulled the strip of white cloth from his pocket and tied it round his head. More Marines, all moving slowly, joined him and followed as he led the way round the castle, a sheer face of shaped stone. From here he had a fine view of El Pilar across the channel: the moon was higher now and the shadows shorter. Then he was at the corner and peering round it along the south side of San Antonio. The doorway, blast it, was halfway along the wall with no cover, and hundreds of mosquitoes seemed to be living in the cracks of the stonework, all of them with a whine that made a shrill chorus.
He watched carefully but there was no sign of movement. If there was a sentry, he would be inside the door. Mr Ramage had stressed that the attack had to begin at a certain time, but, Rennick found himself puzzling, did the attack begin here, or inside the castle?
He pulled out his watch. Four minutes to go. Here or inside the castle? He asked himself the question again and decided to risk there being a sentry down there; the one who could raise the alarm by seeing the flashes of guns at El Pilar was up on the battlements. He signalled the men to follow and crept along the wall. The darkness played tricks with distance, making the castle seem bigger than it was, and he was surprised how quickly he reached the door. It was enormous, studded with circular bolt-heads which were intended to blunt the axes of an enemy trying to cut their way in—and it was shut. He gripped the big handle, lifted it and pulled. The door moved a few inches with a spine-chilling creak and Rennick waited to see what the noise provoked. Nothing moved on the other side and he pulled it again so that the door was open just wide enough for them to slip through one at a time.
He cocked his pistol, quietly drew his cutlass, then led the way through the opening. There was a big courtyard, most of it hidden in shadow. The castle was a hollow square with a building against the north wall which was probably used as a barracks for the garrison. A smaller building a few yards beyond was most likely the officers’ quarters, while another nearby would be the kitchen. To one side, stone steps led up to the top of the wall, where the guns sat, waiting.
By now all the Marines were through the door. Rennick found the corporal and gave him his orders, then took his own section of men and whispered their instructions. He looked at his watch. Two minutes to go. He hissed a warning to the men, repeated it when a minute had gone, and then counted the remaining seconds, finishing with a “Go,” when he led the rush across the square.
The corporal’s section went straight to the two barrack buildings while Rennick raced to the steps. As he reached the bottom one he saw the dim outline of a man standing at the top. He knew it was hopeless to try a pistol shot in the bad light, and anyway the noise would raise the alarm quicker than a shout. The man had vanished and was shouting as Rennick rushed up the steps, all tiredness vanishing in the spasm of fear as he pictured alert men waiting to shoot him as he reached the top.
Down below there was a thudding interspersed with the sound of cutlass blades, then shouts in Spanish. Rennick reached the top of the steps and paused a moment, trying to distinguish where the sentries were. There was a flash of a musket from the western end of the wall and a shot twanged away in ricochet. The rest of the Marines streamed up the steps, but Rennick had already realized that there was only one sentry who must have bolted back from the steps to seize his musket. Now he would be gripping the empty weapon and feeling lonely and defenceless.
“Secure him!” Rennick said loudly, and looked across at El Pilar. There was no noise, no flashes. With luck the sergeant had caught the Spanish asleep there too.
He ran down the steps followed by several of his men and found that the corporal was already beginning to line up a row of sleepy but frightened prisoners. Three Marines dragged a figure from the smaller building, a man wearing a long nightshirt and clearly the commandant. He too was forced into the line, which comprised about twenty men. Yet there had been only one man on sentry duty. It had been just on the hour when the man appeared at the top of the steps, so he was probably coming down to arouse his relief.
As Rennick thought of the commandant, the man in the long nightshirt, he realized that the castle was in his hands.
“Corporal,” he called, “the lanterns!”
“They’re here ready, sir.”
“Light them, then put them up on the west wall!”
Three lanterns each set three feet apart on the west wall would tell the Jocasta—and the sergeant over at El Pilar—that San Antonio had been captured. Half the task was completed, and he looked round carefully before setting off to complete the other half.
He saw it in a few moments, and realized that he must have passed within a few feet of it in the rush to the steps. It was in the centre of the courtyard, and in the moonlight it looked as if it could be a well. He reached it to find a horizontal trapdoor which reminded him of a hatch in a ship. There was a padlock on it and he called for an axeman, one of the men who would, if necessary, have battered down the castle door.
A dozen well-placed strokes cut out the section of plank on which the hasp was bolted. Willing hands grabbed the door and swung it back, and Rennick saw that steps cut in rock went down into what was little more than a cave. He handed a Marine his pistol and cutlass and went down the steps. It was the magazine; stored in the cave were enough barrels of powder and cartridges to withstand a year’s siege. He felt one barrel after another, and finally gave up counting before he came across bales of felt wads. Many hundredweights of powder; probably several tons. More than enough to do the job.
He called for the corporal and, after being assured that the three lanterns were in position on the west wall, helped unwind a length of slow match which the man had coiled round his waist.
Then Rennick carefully worked at the bung of one of the barrels, loosening it and finally pulling it out. He could feel the powder inside, and taking one end of the slow match he pushed it down until several inches of it were buried. Then he stepped back to the entrance of the magazine, carefully unwinding the match so that a sudden strain did not pull it away from the barrel. It had been cut to a special length, and would take half an hour to burn.
He sent the corporal up the steps first and then followed himself, patting his clothes to make sure that no loose grains of powder clung to the material.
“Now, are the prisoners ready?”
“They’re under guard by the door, sir, all ready to march.” Rennick thought of the half-hour fuse. “Very well, you can start off for the beach with them. Wait by the boat for me. Leave two men on guard here. Now—” he looked round for two particular Marines “—
Lumley, Rogers! Ah, there you are; come on, let’s attend to those guns!”
As the corporal gave the orders which would start the prisoners down the path, Rennick ran up the steps to the guns, followed by the two Marines, each with a hammer tucked in his belt. Twenty-eight guns to spike, Rennick thought crossly, but at that moment he looked across the channel and saw the Jocasta emerge into the open sea. Mr Ramage would have seen the lanterns and known San Antonio was secured. What about El Pilar? He could just make out three horizontal lights on El Pilar’s walls showing that the sergeant had done his job.
As soon as Rennick reached the first gun, one of the Marines produced a small piece of steel rod, slightly tapered at one end. At an impatient gesture from Rennick he pushed the tapered end of the spike into the touchhole and gave it a gentle tap with the hammer to seat it. Then he increased the weight of the blows and the spike was slowly driven down into the touchhole, the top burring over slightly so that by the time it reached the rim of the touchhole itself it was fatter and needed one final heavy blow to drive it flush.
As they moved on to the next gun Rennick saw the Calypso gliding out of the entrance, following the Jocasta and the Santa Barbara. The entire Spanish naval strength of Santa Cruz, he thought idly, was now outside the harbour, prisoners of the Royal Navy, and the town slept peacefully.
The second Marine was now busy hammering home spikes, starting with the guns overlooking the channel. Rennick checked each man’s work and finally watched the last spike being driven home. The Spanish would find it difficult to bore out these rivets so that the guns could be used again, but spiking was not an absolutely sure way of wrecking a gun, even if done carefully. Mr Ramage had refused him permission to put a double-charge of powder and three round shot in each gun, a degree of overloading that usually blew the barrel apart like ripping the skin from a ripe banana.
Rennick led the way down the steps to the courtyard, which was now deserted except for the two sentries guarding the magazine. He was carrying one of the lanterns, which he put down well clear of the entrance.
“Lumley,” he said, “give me a hand here, and you others go and wait by the gate, though you won’t be far enough away if I make a mistake!”
The slow match came up the steps from the magazine like a thin snake. Rennick reached down and unwound the rest of it, leading it to windward of the entrance in as direct a line as possible—a sharp kink sometimes made it go out, and it was all too easy to run it through a puddle without noticing it.
“Fetch the lantern, Lumley, but don’t drop it!”
As soon as the Marine came back Rennick told him to put the lantern on the ground. Then he knelt down and swung open the door. The piece of candle flickered slightly in a gentle breeze, and Rennick took out his watch, looked at the time, and picked up the slow match. He held the end against the candle flame and after a few moments the match began to splutter. Rennick put it flat on the ground and watched the tiny, slightly bluish flame as it moved along almost imperceptibly. It was burning steadily; in half an hour the flame should have reached that barrel of powder and gone down into the bunghole …
“Come on!” Rennick said, and swung the castle door shut as he went out. He gave a nervous giggle as he realized the futility of what he had done, then hurried after his men, They caught up with the Marine party and prisoners halfway down the path, the Spaniards so stunned by what had happened that they were not even talking among themselves. Rennick hoped they would not have recovered by the time they reached the beach: the boat taking them out to the Calypso would be overloaded.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN RAMAGE saw the row of lanterns appear on Castillo San Antonio he gave a sigh of relief which brought a laugh from Southwick. “So you were worrying about Rennick, sir!”
“I was worrying about the job, not the man,” Ramage said impatiently. He glanced astern. “We’re still in range of Santa Fé …”
Southwick sniffed yet again. “I still can’t see the commandant ordering his gunners to open fire on the Jocasta, or whatever her Spanish name was. On the Calypso, perhaps.”
“They can’t tell which is which by now—ah, there are the lights on El Pilar. Both in our hands. I hope those Marines step lively on their way back to the boats.”
Southwick stared up at each fort as the Jocasta passed through a line joining them. “I hope they don’t make any mistake with the slow match,” he said. “I wonder how much powder they have in the magazines.”
“Plenty,” Ramage said. “Poor quality but plenty of it.”
“Let’s hope there’s enough to do the job. That San Antonio must have walls ten feet thick.”
The two men watched as the Jocasta came clear of the two headlands. Ramage brought her round to starboard a couple of points, well up to windward, so that when she was hove-to the current would slowly take her back towards the entrance. The Santa Barbara was still close in with the entrance but the Calypso was now showing up clear of the headlands.
Ramage looked at his watch. “They should be spiking the guns now.”
“Waste of time, to my way of thinking,” Southwick grumbled. “Double charge and three round shot: there’s no chance of repairs, then.”
“Too risky,” Ramage said, remembering that Rennick had made the same argument. “Sixty-four guns altogether. Someone’s bound to get excited and fire one gun too soon. And why rouse out the town and Santa Fé before we have to?”
Southwick shrugged his shoulders. The fact was that he agreed, but he was annoyed that his role in the night’s activities had been slight. True, he had boarded the Jocasta, but he had expected to be given the job of taking Castillo San Antonio, and he was enjoying his grumbles.
“Take the conn, Mr Southwick,” Ramage said. “Heave-to the ship now, and make sure the Calypso heaves-to reasonably close. I want to go through some of those Spanish papers in my cabin.”
The Spanish Captain of the Jocasta, he discovered as he began reading through the papers, was Diego Velasquez, and the way the letters were kept in neat bundles tied with different coloured tapes showed that he was a careful and precise man. Red tape denoted letters and orders from the Captain-General of the province of Caracas (the bulk was due more to the thick wax seals than the amount of paper), while blue tape secured correspondence with the Mayor and junta of Santa Cruz.
A quick glance showed Ramage that the Mayor of Santa Cruz, although given a lot of power and acting more like a governor, was very careful when drawing up orders to make it clear that he was acting for the junta. If wrong orders were given, the Mayor was obviously determined that his council would at least share the blame. Every order was issued on behalf of the junta, and to make doubly sure the Mayor listed the members present at each meeting. They ranged from the judge to the city treasurer; ten of the city’s leading citizens.
The Mayor’s letters dealt mostly with routine matters—reporting that casks of provisions had arrived and were ready for Velasquez, asking about the progress being made in refitting the ship, complaining of the strain on the city’s finances caused by the need to feed all the troops sent on board … Then the almost hysterical warning to Velasquez of the insurrection among the Indians in the mountains, followed by a peremptory order (in the name of the junta) to send the troops on shore for them to march inland and put down the insurrection.
The Mayor was clearly happiest when forwarding instructions to Velasquez which came from the capital of the province, Caracas, a few miles inland from the port of La Guaira. “His Excellency the Captain-General has honoured me with his latest orders, which the junta of Santa Cruz forwards to you and which I direct you to obey with all speed …” was his regular formula.
Ramage had begun by reading the Mayor’s letters on the assumption that they would give the latest orders to Velasquez, but by the time he had read a dozen it was clear that they dealt mostly with provisioning and manning. Anything of any importance from the Captain-General had been sent direct to Velasquez. He tied up the Mayor�
�s letters again and with a sigh turned to those from the Captain-General. Letters from the Admiralty in London were usually brief to the point of being taciturn; only formal documents like commissions used archaic and flowery language. But the Spanish were different: a letter from the Mayor telling Velasquez that ten casks of rice and five of chick-peas were being sent to Santa Cruz from La Guaira meant three lines of elaborate introduction and another three to end the letter.
The first he read from the Captain-General was even worse: His Excellency referred not only to his junta—which dealt with the whole province “on behalf of his sacred Catholic Majesty”—but to the head of every department involved in the particular order. Hardly believing what he read, Ramage saw that the letter was telling Velasquez that an application for timber to replace some deck planking was not approved. Velasquez’s request, the Captain-General wrote, had been submitted to the junta, which had referred it to the Intendente, the man who controlled the province’s treasury. The Intendente passed it to the Commander of the Privateering Branch (apparently, Ramage noted, the Jocasta had been commissioned under the Spanish flag as a privateer, not taken into the Navy). The worthy commander had refused to pay for the wood, saying that “because of recent decisions” it was not now an item that could be charged against the Privateering Branch’s funds, which were for operating privateers, and anyway had been exhausted.
The request, the Captain-General told Velasquez with all the relish of a bureaucrat saying no, had therefore been referred back once again to the Intendente, who had refused to provide the money because the junta had decided a year ago that the ship was not a regular ship of war but a privateer, and as such was not the concern of the Royal Treasury, whose funds (“which are for the moment exhausted”) the Intendente administered.
Ramage, fascinated at the way a few planks of wood could cause so much trouble, re-read the letter and several others dealing with refitting the ship. Finally he realized that the Captain-General, who was the administrative ruler of the province, was at loggerheads with the Intendente, who was the head of the Treasury, and that the cause of their quarrel was the control of the Jocasta.