by Dudley Pope
Fishing boats! He was angry with himself for not having thought of that before, and opened the telescope again to look along the shore. Starting from the beach below the Trinchera Bastion he moved the telescope slowly westwards towards the landing place. There were a few rowing boats hauled well up the beach, higher than one would expect if they were being used daily. There were no buoys marking moorings, but surely they did not haul up the bigger fishing boats? And no fishing boats at the landing place.
He paused a moment. There was one boat, end on now and under oars, which had obviously left the landing place in the last few minutes. And it had passengers on board; men in uniforms, the sun glinting on gold epaulets and tassels.
“We have visitors coming out,” he said. “Rig manropes on the starboard side and warn the men not to talk in front of strangers.”
Aitken hurried away and Southwick said: “I can’t get used to it, sir”—he gestured up at the Spanish flag. “Here we are, hoveto in a Spanish port, with Spanish officers rowing out to us!”
“Just think of the surprise they’re going to get,” Ramage said with a grin.
“You’re going to let them on board? Of course, the manropes! But what if they raise the alarm, sir?”
“They can hardly do that if we have ‘em on board,” Ramage said mildly.
“But we’ll have another handful of useless prisoners,” Southwick grumbled. He was not questioning the Captain’s judgement; he was so disappointed at the empty anchorage that he was looking for scapegoats.
“They’re the only ones who can tell us what has been happening,” Ramage pointed out. “I’m not particularly anxious to go on shore and ask the Port Captain.”
“But supposing they won’t tell us?”
“They will,” Ramage said grimly. “They left their own beds this morning and they can probably see their houses from here. If they think they won’t be going home tonight …”
Southwick nodded. “Yes, they’ll tell us what happened,” he said contentedly.
“They’ll confirm it, anyway,” Ramage said dryly.
The Master’s eyebrows shot up. “Confirm what, sir?”
“That the caldereta hit the anchorage as hard as it hit us.”
“Aye, that could be,” Southwick said cautiously. “I don’t know how far those things extend.”
The boat took more than twenty minutes to reach the Jocasta, and as it came alongside the half a dozen seamen idling about along the frigate’s gangway were in fact a group under Jackson with the pistols tucked in their belts hidden by loose shirts worn outside their trousers.
Ramage stood at the top of the gangway, out of sight from the boat but where he would be seen by the first man to reach the deck.
There was a shout in Spanish from the boat and one of the Jocasta’s seamen threw down a line to use as a painter. Another shout, and a line was thrown from aft as a sternfast. Ramage smiled to himself; he had guessed that the boat would not have long enough lines.
He waited patiently, Aitken standing behind him and Southwick waiting on the quarterdeck. The guns had not been run out, but the locks were fitted, and the trigger lines were neatly coiled and lying across the breeches. Seamen were busy on the fo’c’s’le and main deck coiling ropes and polishing brass.
The first man up, fat-faced and puffing, was not in uniform. As he climbed to deck level Ramage saw that his clothes were made of expensive material and well cut. He stepped on deck and looked around crossly, obviously expecting to see Velasquez. He was followed by a painfully thin, tall man in Army uniform with the insignia of a colonel who looked blankly at Ramage, eyeing his uniform but obviously not recognizing it. The third man was clearly the Port Captain, and the trio stood staring round them as though they had just stepped out of a coach in a strange town.
Ramage stepped forward and asked in Spanish: “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” the man in civilian clothes said crossly. “Where is Captain Velasquez?”
“In Santa Cruz.”
“But—why is he not on board? Who are you?”
Ramage smiled politely. “He is not on board because this is a British ship and I—” he gave a slight bow “—am in command.”
The three men stared blankly, but the Colonel was the first to react: his right hand swung across his body to his sword-hilt, and he had the blade half out of the scabbard before ramming it home again and letting his hand drop to his side. Jackson was standing two yards away, a pistol in his hand, and the click as he cocked it had warned the Colonel.
“Forgive me,” Ramage said politely, “I must ask you to allow one of my men to look after your sword.”
He gave an order to Stafford, who came up behind the Colonel, deftly unclipped the scabbard and then stepped back again.
“Now, gentlemen, let me welcome you on board his Britannic Majesty’s ship Jocasta—” he pronounced the “j” in the Spanish way and saw that all three men recognized the name “—and if you will give your word of honour that you will behave, I suggest we dispense with guards and go down to my cabin and introduce ourselves.”
The civilian nodded. “I give my word. So do these gentlemen.”
Ramage looked questioningly at the Colonel. “You have my word,” he said stiffly.
The third man gave his word and Ramage said: “If you are the Port Captain, please call to your boatman that they will have to wait.”
As the man went to the entry port, Ramage said to Aitken, “Put the boat astern for the time being.”
With that he led the way down the companion-way into the cabin. The introductions took only a few moments: the civilian was the Mayor of La Guaira, the Colonel commanded the fortress and the town garrison, and the third man was indeed the Port Captain.
Ramage sat the three of them on the settee, the Mayor in the middle. He sat at his desk, turning the chair to face the trio, and he looked at them expectantly but saying nothing. The Port Captain stared round the cabin with the concentration of a horse-coper inspecting a spavined nag before making an offer, and the Colonel examined the toes of his highly polished boots. The Mayor was, as Ramage expected, the first to break the silence.
“Where is Captain Velasquez?”
“I told you, he is in Santa Cruz.” Ramage’s voice was vague; clearly the topic bored him.
“But this ship—she is La Perla.” The Mayor was truculent now.
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “She is the Jocasta. You called her La Perla, but she is the Jocasta again.”
“The Spanish flag—she still sails under the Spanish flag!” Ramage yawned. “I really must change it.”
“You are fighting under false colours!” the Colonel exclaimed, startling the Mayor with his vehemence.
“Hardly fighting, I assure you; just sailing. That is a legitimate ruse de guerre. If we were fighting, I assure you we would be doing so under our own flag.”
“La Perla,” the Mayor persisted, obviously completely bewildered and like a man trying to break a dream. “She was in Santa Cruz. We expected her here.”
“Quite so. She was in Santa Cruz and she is now here.”
“You know what I mean,” the Mayor said angrily, pulling a large handkerchief from his pocket and mopping his face.
“We sailed into Santa Cruz in another frigate, recaptured her and sailed her out.”
“I do not believe you!”
Ramage gave a dry laugh and the Mayor flushed. “Well, I find it hard to believe,” he added in a voice strangely shrill for such a fat man. “Where is the other frigate?”
“Señor,” Ramage said, his voice taking on a harsher note, “although I am prepared to satisfy your curiosity, you are hardly in a position to interrogate me.”
“All right, I believe you,” the Mayor said hurriedly. “But what is to become of us?”
“You are prisoners for the moment.”
“But that is ridiculous! Why, we are close by the fortress—”
“Stop ranting,” the Colonel said curtly. “
You are not addressing a junta. No one in the fort will open fire on the frigate flying a Spanish flag, especially since they know their commanding officer is on board. And this man said we were prisoners ‘for the moment.’” He looked directly at Ramage. “Do I understand you are not going to take us away?”
“I hope not,” Ramage said. “You have much to do after the caldereta. Repairing damage to the houses, finding the ship …”
“The ship!” the Mayor exclaimed. “How can we search for her when we have no vessels—” He broke off, conscious that the Port Captain and the Colonel had both turned to stare at him.
“You have no need to worry,” Ramage said smoothly, thankful that the Mayor had leapt into what was at best a crude trap. “She had not drifted far.”
“How do you know?” the Port Captain asked warily.
“Señor, please!” Ramage said in an offended voice. “The caldereta drags her from her anchors, she drifts before the wind …”
“But she hasn’t sailed back!”
Ramage thought quickly. “She could hardly sail back if she lost her masts and was captured by the enemy.”
“Caramba!” the Mayor exclaimed, “we are ruined! What will the Viceroy—” Again he broke off, embarrassed that once again he had given something away.
“The fortune of war,” Ramage said philosophically, seeing a clear picture of the merchant ship slowly beating her way back to La Guaira, perhaps even now in sight from the masthead.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, standing up, “I’ll see you back to your boat.”
“You mean we are free?” the Mayor asked excitedly. He jumped up and, forgetting how low the cabin was, cracked his head on a beam. He subsided on the settee, glassy-eyed.
The Colonel looked down at him coldly and then turned to Ramage and said: “Thank you. I do not know how you captured this ship in Santa Cruz; I would not have thought even a rowing boat could get past the forts.”
“The forts are now in ruins,” Ramage said quietly.
The Colonel went pale. “How many English ships made the attack?”
“One—a frigate similar to this.”
“Who commanded her?”
“I did.”
“Where is she now?”
“Waiting for us,” Ramage said. “One of my officers is commanding her.”
“Your Admiral will be pleased to see you,” the Colonel said, his voice a mixture of bitterness and admiration. “The caldereta has made you a rich man.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE WHITE houses of La Guaira were just dropping below the horizon as Ramage took the weights off the chart and let it roll up with a snap. He and Southwick had finally, at the end of a series of guesses, estimated the merchant ship’s present position.
They had to assume that the caldereta had behaved in the same way at La Guaira as it had when it hit the Jocasta. It would have parted the merchant ship’s cables and driven her northwards for about one and a half hours—providing she had not capsized. In that time she would have drifted up to eight miles. Then the wind had slowly backed, taking half to three-quarters of an hour to get round to the east. In that time the ship would have drifted another four miles or so in a north-westerly direction. After that, assuming she had not been able to set sail, she would have drifted westwards, carried by both wind and current, for four hours, covering sixteen to twenty miles. The cross on the chart showed where she should be at this moment.
Ramage had pencilled on the chart her probable track: a dogleg about 28 miles long, setting the ship well down to the west and about ten miles offshore.
“There’s a lot of ‘if’ and ‘maybe,’” Southwick had grumbled. “If she hasn’t capsized, if she drifts at this speed or that, maybe her masts went by the board …”
“It’ll take us about five hours to get down to her,” Ramage said. “If she can set any sail naturally we’ll meet her sooner. We should sight her before it’s dark.”
“If she’s still afloat. Do you think she’s likely to have capsized, sir?”
Ramage shook his head. “No, I think she was so close in to the shore that it might have saved her when it first started blowing. It was only during the first few minutes that we nearly capsized, until we could run off before it.”
“It seemed like hours,” Southwick commented.
“Yes. Well, her cables couldn’t take the strain and eventually they parted and she began drifting out to sea. They knew what to expect, and I think they might have been able to keep her under control. I hope so, anyway.”
“I’m doubtful about our estimates of the speed at which she’s drifting.”
“I agree. I think she’ll be slower. So we’re likely to see her more to the south-west. But the visibility is good and the lookouts have telescopes.”
The first hail from the mainmasthead three hours later warned that there was a small boat on the starboard bow, and the Jocasta bore up to find it was empty. The second hail, half an hour after that, told of three boats on the starboard bow, and they too were empty and nearly sunk.
Southwick plotted their positions and then came up to report to Ramage. “They drifted in the direction we expected, sir. A lot slower, but o’ course they’re half-full of water and don’t have the windage of a merchant ship.”
The next hail revealed a drogher drifting along, her mainsail in shreds and floating low in the water. The two men on board, taken off by one of the Jocasta’s boats, reported that the other three men in the crew had been washed overboard. More important, they told Ramage that while the caldereta was blowing they had seen the merchant ship drifting past them apparently undamaged.
This news had cheered Southwick. “We’ll soon sight her beating up towards us,” he told Aitken, but the young Scot was gloomy: “If she could set any canvas, she’d be in sight by now. Her topsails, anyway.”
The First Lieutenant was echoing Ramage’s thoughts. The men from the drogher—now below under guard, thankful at having been rescued but depressed at being prisoners—had been far from sure when they had seen the merchant ship: they could not say whether it was three minutes after the wind parted their anchor cable or thirty; they explained that they had been fighting to stifle the mainsail, which parted the gaskets, and then busy pumping to save the vessel.
“You think she’s gone?” Southwick asked Aitken.
“Aye—probably capsized just to spite us. We must have used up all our luck at Santa Cruz.”
Ramage feared that Aitken’s view was shared by most of the ship’s company, who had been full of zest as they left La Guaira. Now, four hours later, the laughing and teasing had gone; they were cheerful enough, but no longer excited.
If he was honest, he had to admit he was losing hope; it had been something of a gamble from the start. It was satisfying to know that if the merchant ship had been in La Guaira there would have been no difficulty in capturing her and towing her out. No one could anticipate Nature playing such a trick; one which robbed both the Spanish and the British with the same savage impartiality.
“Deck there!”
The hail was from the lookout at the foremasthead, and Ramage listened as Aitken answered: “Deck here!”
“Masts, sir, looks like three masts one point on the larboard bow.”
“No sails set?”
“No, sir; leastways, not uppers.”
“Can you make out the hull?”
“No, sir, only the topmasts. Lying north and south, they are.” It could be her, Ramage thought. The position was about right, and apart from a neutral ship which had unluckily strayed into the path of the caldereta, there was no other ship it was likely to be.
Aitken was looking at him, waiting for orders.
“We’ll go down to investigate her, Mr Aitken. Have the boats ready for hoisting out, and pass the word for Mr Rennick.”
An hour later the Jocasta was hove-to a cable to windward of a small merchant ship. Ramage estimated her to be about four hundred tons. Her masts were bare; he cou
ld make out three yards lying across her decks in a tangle of ropes. Where were the others?
“At least she’s not floating low,” Southwick said.
“No, they’re not working the pumps,” Ramage confirmed, lowering the telescope.
“But there’s a deal of work in getting those yards up again. She’s probably sprung her masts, too,” Southwick grumbled.
Ramage turned to Aitken. “We’ll send two boats over. You’ll take one, I’ll take the other. A dozen Marines in each. Rennick can go with you.”
As the First Lieutenant hurried off to the main deck, Southwick said: “Let me take a boat, sir. It’s not right for you to be leading boarding parties.”
“I need some exercise,” Ramage said flippantly.
“But you can’t trust those Dons, sir.”
“Mr Southwick,” Ramage said impatiently, remembering the times before when the Master had protested at being left on board, “as soon as you learn to speak Spanish you can board every Spanish ship we sight!”
“But I can bring back the Captain for you to question,” the Master protested. “It’s not seemly, sir.”
“It may not be seemly, but it saves a lot of time.” With that he went below to collect his sword.
As Jackson steered the boat across the merchant ship’s stern, Ramage realized that losing her yards was not the only damage: as she pitched he saw that her rudder was smashed. The rudder-post was still there but the blade had been torn off. No wonder they were not hurrying to get the yards up again; first they needed a jury-rudder.
Now there were a dozen or more men lining the rail and watching the approaching boats. The masts looked curiously naked, like great fir trees stripped of their branches and leaves. Yet the paintwork of the hull was in good condition and she was pierced for eight guns. And there it was—Jackson had noticed it too and grunted. Always, as you approached a Spanish or French ship from to leeward, there was the whiff of garlic.
“They look quiet enough, sir,” Jackson murmured.
“Glad to see us, even though they can see from our colours it means they’ll be taken prisoner. Better that than drifting all the way to the Mosquito Coast.”