courses had been let fall and sheeted home. Ramage had not set the topgallants or stunsails, but apart from that the Jocasta showed no sign of the assault by the caldereta. All the men were wearing fresh clothes and the hot sun had dried out the decks. Ramage, already perspiring in the scorching sun, found it hard to believe that less than three hours ago he had been shivering with cold, his teeth chattering in a howling wind.
'Six miles to La Guaira, sir, ' Southwick reported.
Six miles, three quarters of an hour's sailing. Ramage looked across to Aitken: 'Beat to quarters, but don't run out the guns. Load with canister.'
He turned aft, to where Paolo was crouching down, slowly turning the pages of a book in the sun. 'How is that coming on?'
'Nearly dry, sir; you can turn the pages without risking tearing them. The colours have run, but I can distinguish the flags.'
An hour ago Ramage had wanted to look through the Spanish signal book and he had gone to the binnacle drawer to find it still half-full of rainwater and spray, the book floating like a tiny raft. He had cursed the skill of joiners who had made a watertight drawer, and set Paolo to work with a towel, drying the pages with cautious dabs and then finishing off the job with the heat of the sun. The pages were curling and the cardboard cover had warped, but the printed words had not been affected.
Paolo handed him the book and Ramage looked through the signals. What was the Spanish flag procedure? He had searched through the papers on board, but there was no record that La Perla had ever been given Spanish pendant numbers, the three-figure sequence of numeral flags used in the Royal Navy to identify ships, and which were always hoisted when going into a harbour or anchorage.
Should he fire a salute, and if so to whom? La Guaira was simply a port, not the capital of a province; the senior official would be the Mayor. Again, he had no idea how many guns a mayor rated - if any. The signal book gave him no ideas; he shut it and gave it back to Paolo. Better to ignore salutes and pendant numbers than to get them wrong; doing the wrong thing was more obvious than omitting something. Better offend the Mayor by not giving him his salute than make him suspicious by firing the number of guns reserved for someone like the Captain-General of the province. And anyway, Ramage thought to himself, there should not be much time for feelings to be ruffled or suspicions aroused.
By now the Marine drummer was striding round the main deck beating a series of ruffles. In a few moments the gunner would be hurrying below to open up the magazine and men were already getting ready to load the guns. Rammers, used to drive home cartridges and shot, the sponges which would be soaked with water to swab and cool the guns and extinguish burning debris, and the handspikes used to train the guns, were being unlashed ready for use.
Other men were putting two types of tubs beside the guns: one would be filled with water for the sponges; the other would have lengths of slow match lodged in notches cut round the top edge, the burning ends hanging inside, over the water, so they could not accidentally ignite the stray grains of gunpowder which were almost inevitably scattered over the deck in the heat of action. Unless a flintlock failed to make a spark, slow matches would not be used to fire the guns; they were merely insurance.
More men were waiting for the pumps to be rigged so they could wet the decks while others stood by with buckets of sand, ready to sprinkle it on the planking to stop the guns' crews slipping. Cutlasses and tomahawks were already hung up along the inside of the bulwarks; the boarding pikes were waiting in their racks round the masts, like Roman fasces.
Ramage, glancing up at the red and gold flag of Spain streaming out overhead, could see no reason why anyone should not think that the frigate was La Perla, carrying out the orders of His Excellency the Captain-General of the Province of Caracas, arriving when expected, on passage to Havana.
Punta Caraballeda was on the quarter and Punta el Cojo was on the beam when Aitken arrived on the quarterdeck to report the ship ready for action. A minute or two later Southwick, who had been busy with his quadrant measuring the horizontal angles between the three headlands, announced that they were just over a mile from the shore.
Both men stood waiting expectantly. Now, they thought, the Captain will give his instructions. Aitken was excited, anxious to know what plan the Captain had for capturing the ship with the 'particular cargo'; Southwick was concerned only that he should not forget any part of the instructions. Ramage thanked them both and commented: 'We should be seeing Trinchera Bastion in a few minutes. It's on the hills to the east of the port. We won't see Miguel Fort until we are almost off the town.'
'No, sir, ' Southwick said stiffly, having made the copy of the chart Ramage had been using, and knowing that his Captain was being evasive. 'And until we round Punta Mulatos we won't be able to see into the anchorage.'
'Yes - tantalizing, isn't it?' Ramage remarked off-handedly, looking over the larboard bow with his telescope. 'Curious that we haven't seen any fishing boats drifting after the caldereta. Those fellows know what to look for, and get on shore in time.'
'We know - now, ' Southwick said crossly. 'At least, I do; I think you knew already, sir.'
Ramage lowered the telescope and stared at Southwick. 'I've never seen a caldereta before in my life! '
'But you handed the sails in time, ' Southwick protested.
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'Barely, but you know as well as I that any sudden change in the visibility always means a change in the weather, no matter whether you're in the Tropics or the Chops of the Channel.'
'A change in the weather, yes, ' Southwick conceded, 'but that came up like a white squall.'
Ramage, unable to explain that he set more store by his own instinct than in weather lore, much of which contradicted itself, resumed his examination of the coast with the telescope and said: 'There's deep water to within a musket shot of the shore along here, but I want a man ready in the chains.'
Aitken hurried away to station a man with a leadline ready in case the Captain suddenly called for soundings.
Jackson, standing to one side of the binnacle, his eyes moving methodically from the compass to the luffs of the topsails, was surprised at both the First Lieutenant and the Master. There was more excuse for Mr Aitken because he had sailed with the Captain for only a few months, but Mr Southwick ought to know better. The pair of them had been quizzing Mr Ramage to know what he intended to do when they arrived at La Guaira, as though he should have a cut-and-dried plan for cutting out a ship from an anchorage he had never seen.
That showed how much they really knew about Mr Ramage. He could come up with a masterly plan at times - and usually the secret of its success was its simplicity. But where he was brilliant was in his ability to keep a completely open mind until the last moment. He would look round with that grin on his face, probably rub one of those two scars over his right eyebrow, give a few quiet orders, and that would be that.
The secret, and the American almost sighed as he recalled how many times he had tried to explain it to Stafford and Rossi, was in two things: Mr Ramage could spot an opportunity - a weakness in the enemy defences - which other men would miss; and then he was lightning-quick in deciding how to take advantage of it.
Stafford partly understood it, since Jackson had pointed out that a burglar rarely knew what he would find when he broke into a house. Usually he had only a few minutes to decide whether he would take a set of bulky silver candelabras and cutlery from the dining-room table or waste time looking for jewellery that might be hidden anywhere in the house. Staff, who freely admitted that he turned his skills as a locksmith in such directions as burglary 'when times was 'ard”, had chuckled then, but this morning, before the squall, he had been like everyone else in the ship's company, trying to guess the Captain's plan.
Jackson growled at the men at the wheel and they hurriedly heaved at the spokes to bring the ship back on course. The wind was following the coast, steady from the east. Curious how that squall suddenly came up from the south: a miniature gale, really, with the wind switching back the moment it cleared.
It had been a close call: some of the men reckoned the Jocasta heeled over so far that the ends of her lower yards had touched the water. Jackson had to admit he had not been looking; he had grabbed a ring bolt with both hands and prayed that one of the guns on the windward side would not break loose and come skidding across the deck to crush him.
He grinned happily to himself. One day he would count up how many times he had been quartermaster when Mr Ramage took a ship into action. Meanwhile he must remember to keep an eye on young Mr Orsini; if anything happened to him the Marchesa's heart would break. It was hard to know whether the lad was brave or stupid, but the way he set about those Dons in Santa Cruz - on the deck of this very ship - with a dirk in one hand and a cutlass in the other. . . He had plenty of courage, and Jackson was thankful he had been able to cut down the Don who had got behind the boy and was about to spit him with a boarding pike. It had been all over in a second, and Mr Orsini never knew how close he had been to death.
'I can make out the Trinchera Bastion, ' Ramage said casually.
'You should be able to see into the anchorage in a few moments, ' Southwick said.
'I can already, ' Ramage said. 'It's empty.'
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Jocasta was hove-to on the larboard tack half a mile off the landing place in front of La Guaira, her bow heading directly towards the town, which was a large cluster of white houses built on a flat ledge between the hills and sprawling down towards the water's edge.
Ramage shut his telescope with an impatient snap and Southwick gave a disgusted sniff.
'What do you think, sir? Hasn't the ship arrived yet?'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. He thought that he had anticipated every possibility, ranging from finding that a Spanish ship of the line had arrived unexpectedly to discovering the 'particular cargo' had been unloaded and locked up somewhere on shore under a heavy guard.
Aitken coughed, his usual modest preliminary to offering a suggestion: 'Perhaps they've been warned from Santa Cruz and the ship has sailed.'
'No, ' Ramage said, 'no messenger could have beaten us here, even if it was a flat road all the way - can you imagine what it's like having to cross all these mountains?'
All three men looked gloomily at the rows of peaks disappearing in the distance to the eastward.
'It's very strange, ' Southwick growled. 'We know from all those Spanish letters that up to a couple of days ago Velasquez thought that damned merchant ship was waiting here.'
'Aye, but anything could have happened since the last of those orders was sent from La Guaira or Caracas, ' Aitken said. 'They're three or four days old by the time a messenger delivers them in Santa Cruz.'
'The place is so empty of ships that it's almost as though they're expecting an English attack, ' Southwick commented.
The thought had already crossed Ramage's mind: was there another British frigate cruising along this coast, sent out from Jamaica by Sir Hyde Parker?
