by Dudley Pope
Ramage, blinded even though he had held his hands over his eyes, felt the Jocasta slowly heeling: not the easy movement of a roll as a wave passed under the ship but a gradual inexorable tilting of the deck as the enormous force of the wind pressed against every square inch of hull, masts, yards, ropes and sails; as though she was being hove down for careening.
She was not paying off! Eight points had been too much; the ship was dead in the water and gradually going over. He managed to blink his eyes open for a moment and saw the men fighting, eyes shut, to hold the wheel, but the quartermaster had lost his footing and was struggling on his back in the lee scuppers like a stranded fish. And along the starboard side the seas, driven before this tremendous wind, were piling up like snow against a wall. Southwick was clutching the quarterdeck rail; Aitken, spreadeagled on the deck, was holding on to an eyebolt, and the whole ship was inside a cocoon of streaming rain and spray: he could barely see the end of the jibboom. A moment before the stinging salt made him shut his eyes again he saw that the reefed maintopsail was in shreds but, by a miracle, the foretopsail was holding, a bulging, swollen grey curve straining every stitch and seam.
He realized he was now gripping the cascabel of a 6-pounder gun and hard put to keep on his feet, but as he sorted out what he had just seen in his mind he knew that the Jocasta was on the verge of capsizing: a few more pounds of pressure, a few more degrees of heel . . . Already the water was . . . Suddenly he felt the ship recovering from being a dead mass: she seemed to give a massive shrug and the hull began to move, life slowly coming back to her as she gathered way.
The wheel! Blinking away the salt in his eyes he scrambled to the wheel. Three men were holding on to the spokes, pulling down with all their weight, but the fourth man had fallen.
"Hold her! " Ramage bellowed, seizing a couple of spokes and hauling down, "hold her, otherwise she'll broach! "
Now, with his back to the wind and rain and spray, it was easier to see, and the ship was slowly, agonizingly slowly, coming upright as she turned to bring the wind aft: all the enormous strength was now beginning to act on the foretopsail and the transom, trying to thrust her before it instead of pressing along the starboard side, trying to lay her over on her beam ends.
"Ease her! " Ramage gasped, able to do little more than guess the wind direction, and the four of them let the wheel turn slowly, a spoke at a time. "Another couple of spokes . . . and two more . . . two more . . . that's it: hold her there! "
He staggered to the binnacle, noting that the wind vanes had disappeared, wiped the compass glass and saw the ship was steering north by west. A moment later the quartermaster was beside him, his face streaming with blood from a cut on the brow.
"Sorry, sir, I'm all right now! "
"North by west, " Ramage shouted, "hold her on that! "
He realized that the sound of gunfire was in fact the main-topsail: the torn cloths of the sail still secured to the yard were flogging violently and shaking the whole mast so that the decks trembled. But the double-reefed foretopsail was holding; it was holding and keeping the Jocasta running before the wind, pulling her like a terrified mare being dragged from a flooded stable.
Ramage looked round for Southwick and saw that somehow he had managed to get down to the maindeck and was collecting a party of topmen to send aloft to secure the remnants of the maintopsail. But two seamen were crouched over Aitken and a moment later Ramage saw Bowen staggering across the quarterdeck towards the First Lieutenant. The surgeon must have come up the companionway the moment he could climb, knowing that there would be injured men needing his attention.
Southwick was dealing with the torn topsail, Bowen was attending to Aitken; what else needed doing? The quartermaster's face was a red smear as rain spread the blood. The man was white-faced and wiping his eyes with the back of his hands, but he was watching the compass and turning to give an occasional order to the men at the wheel.
Then Ramage noticed Jackson hurrying up the quarterdeck ladder and looking round anxiously. He saw Ramage and, reassured, was about to turn and go back to the main deck when Ramage waved to him and pointed to the quartermaster.
The American understood immediately and went over to tap the bloodstained man on the shoulder, but the man shook his head. Jackson pointed at Bowen and then at Ramage, and gave the man a shove away from the binnacle. With the wind still screaming it was almost impossible to talk, and Ramage went over to the binnacle to shout in Jackson's ear: "Hold her on this course unless the wind shifts! "
Jackson nodded and bellowed back: "You all right, sir?"
Ramage nodded in turn and pointed to Aitken and the quartermaster, who was now kneeling beside Bowen, more anxious to help him attend the First Lieutenant than be treated himself. "How are things on the main deck?"
"No one hurt, " Jackson shouted. "All the gun tackles held. A few pikes came out of the racks, otherwise everything's all right. We were holding on tight! "
With Jackson acting as quartermaster and the fourth man back at the wheel, Ramage struggled to collect his thoughts. The foretopsail was holding, the heavy rain was easing slightly, and with the ship running off before the wind there was not so much spray - or, rather, it was coming from astern so he could look ahead without feeling that salt-tipped needles were puncturing his eyeballs. The Jocasta had nearly capsized - his fault entirely: he had come round eight points, and it should have been only half that, but the ship had saved herself (or, perhaps, the thanks were due to Sir Thomas Slade, the man who designed her). As far as he knew the only real damage was a blown-out maintopsail.
Was she leaking? Had these driving seas sprung a plank? More than one plank, in fact? Ramage looked round and saw that Paolo was now standing by the capstan, rubbing his head as though he had just recovered consciousness. As the boy turned Ramage beckoned to him.
"Are you all right?" he shouted.
"Yes, sir, I bumped my head."
"Very well: go down and find the carpenter. Have him sound the well and report to me."
Paolo pointed to the quarterdeck ladder: the carpenter was struggling up it, having to pull himself up against the pressure of the wind. He made his way to Ramage and saluted. "I sounded the well, sir, " he bawled. "A couple of feet of water, that's all. From spray down the hatches."
"Sound every ten minutes and report to me. I'll let you have men for the pump as soon as I can. Anyone injured below?"
The carpenter shook his head and gave a wry grin. "Rare old mess down there, sir; lots of things weren't secured! " With that he made his way to the ladder, cautiously working his way forward from gun to gun, the wind pushing him invisibly and the pitching of the ship trying to fling him.
A movement in the rigging caught Ramage's eye and he saw that men were fighting their way up the ratlines, obviously sent aloft by Southwick. They were lying flat against the rigging as they climbed, fighting the wind which was trying to wrench them off, and reminding Ramage of lizards.
Was the shrill scream of the wind gradually easing? It was hard to tell; at the moment it seemed to have been blowing for hours instead of minutes. He was thankful he had memorized the chart for this part of the coast; there was nothing ahead but Los Roques, the group of cays and reefs making a long, low barrier running from east to west, and they were still sixty miles or so to the north, another seven or eight hours' sailing.
A few minutes later the rain had stopped and the wind was certainly dropping: the topmen had reached the yard and were beginning to slash at the shreds of the topsail, careful that flogging reef-points did not cut them.
Ramage suddenly realized how cold he was: his boots were half-full of water, squelching and sucking as he walked, and his sodden clothes stuck to him like a soggy piecrust. Bowen was now standing up and helping Aitken to his feet. The First Lieutenant staggered for a moment or two, held by Bowen and the injured quartermaster; then he braced himself and made his way over to Ramage.
"I'm sorry, sir; I lost my footing."
"A
re you all right now?"
"Yes, sir, just a bump on the head."
Aitken's hair was plastered down and sodden with blood, and he was pale. Ramage looked questioningly at Bowen, who nodded. "Very well, as you can see -" Ramage gestured aloft "- we have to get another topsail from the sail room and bend it on. Are you up to it?"
"Yes, sir, " Aitken said, his voice now firmer. "Give me half an hour and we'll have a new sail drawing! "
Ramage nodded and Aitken made his way down to the main deck. They had been very lucky, Ramage reflected, but he was resentful at losing the topsail. There was a lot of work ahead, hoisting the spare sail up on deck and then swaying it aloft in slings, securing it to the yards and fitting sheets, bowlines, clewlines, buntlines . . . there seemed to be more rope than canvas. Yet there was some 1600 square feet of canvas, a quadrilateral thirty-six feet along the head where it was secured to the yard, and fifty-six feet on the foot, and thirty-six feet deep.
As the rain stopped the wind eased down and began to back. Jackson was already watching the luff of the foretopsail and Ramage guessed that with luck they would be steering direct for La Guaira within half an hour.
Suddenly he thought of the Calypso: how far offshore did these calderetas extend? By now Wagstaffe should be a good sixty or seventy miles to the north, close to the chain of reefs and cays. Obviously the calderetas were caused by the mountains; he could only hope that they exhausted themselves within thirty miles or so. Wagstaffe was unlikely to be suspicious of the unusual light that preceded them; his first warning - if they reached that far - would be the wall of black cloud. Ramage pictured the frigate floating dismasted, utterly helpless. He cursed himself for not giving Wagstaffe definite instructions about which side of the chain of islands he was to sail: now, if the Calypso was not at the rendezvous, he would be hunting for a hulk somewhere in at least 250 square miles. If Wagstaffe had kept south of the islands and then lost his masts he would end up among Los Roques, stranded among rocks, coral heads, reefs, cays less than twenty feet high . . . Admiral Davis might yet end up with only one frigate.
Two and a half hours after the caldereta had first hit the Jocasta, the frigate was stretching along the coast in bright sunshine under all plain sail, the wind back in the east and steady. Punta Caraballeda was abeam to the south and Ramage could see Punta el Cojo on the larboard bow with, just beyond it, Punta Mulatos, which was only two miles short of La Guaira.
The new maintopsail was losing its creases; mercifully it had not been attacked by rats in the sailroom. The reefs had been shaken out of the foretopsail and the 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 alw
ays 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.
