'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 any 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 dog-leg about twenty-eight 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 could make out three yards lying across her decks in a tangle of ropes. Where where 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.'
Jackson snapped an order to the oarsmen and a moment later the bowman had hooked on with a boathook and the boat was rising and falling alongside the ship. Ramage jammed his hat on his head, swung his sword round out of the way, and leapt for the rope ladder hanging down the ship's side.
The men who met him on deck were unshaven, their faces drawn with weariness and despair. Behind them the wheel spun uselessly and in several places the deck planking was stove in where yards had crashed down. On the starboard side the bulwarks were jagged, sections crushed by the weight of the falling yards.
One of the men stepped forward. He was solidly built and in better times he obviously had a cheerful face. Now his skin was grey from fatigue and his eyes rimmed with red.
'I am the master of this ship, ' he said nervously.
Ramage nodded and answered in Spanish. 'You are now prize to his Britannic Majesty's ship Jocasta.'
