by Dudley Pope
Twenty-eight men dead because a seaman called Summers talked his shipmates into mutiny—although one should include the captain and officers who were murdered, and the various mutineers later executed. Twenty-eight men dead, the ghost of Summers might argue, because Captain Nicholas Ramage saw fit to attempt a cutting out which another captain had already said was impossible. Yet, blaming himself, Summers, Admiral Davis or Eames didn’t bring anyone back to life; he knew he should be thankful to Bowen, because without even looking he knew that several of the wounded were alive only because of the Surgeon’s skill.
Southwick pulled out his watch. “Five minutes to moonrise, sir, then we’ll have to wait another ten minutes or so before it gets up clear of the hills.”
“Very well, you and Aitken had better make sure that we are all ready.”
When the two men had gone Ramage took the four books which had been sitting on top of the desk, slid them into a drawer and turned the key. The Spanish order book, letter book, captain’s journal and the signal book for the Jocasta—La Perla, rather. The first two would make interesting reading; it was a pity there was no time to go through them now.
The muscles of his stomach gave a spasm of protest as he began to get up. That he was lucky to be alive was plain from the damaged pistol now in the second drawer of the desk and the cut in the front flap of his trousers. The horizontal slash from that Spaniard’s cutlass had hit him in the stomach, but the blow had been taken by one of the pistols tucked in his belt. The blade had hit the side of the butt and been deflected, sliding down an inch or two before coming hard up against the steel and pan cover, which had absorbed most of the impact. Sea Service pistols were clumsy and heavy, but he would never again complain about them; the sturdy construction and sheer bulk had saved his life. Nevertheless it would be a few days before he would be able to sit or walk comfortably; he felt as if he had been kicked by a horse. Apart from the pain, he did not want to think about it. His imagination ran riot when he thought of dying from a stomach wound.
On deck there was a faint lightening in the eastern sky. The moon was almost in its last quarter, just the right strength: it would be light enough to show the edges of the channel, but Ramage was hoping it would not help the Spanish gunners in the forts too much.
Half the Calypso’s ship’s company were now on board the Jocasta: they already knew their jobs on board the prize—whether they were topmen or afterguard, which gun they served, if they were to be armed with cutlass or pike, pistol or tomahawk. Fortunately that had not been a tiresome job: Aitken and Southwick had simply taken the watch, quarter and station bill for the Calypso, which showed where each of the seamen and Marines on board went for the various evolutions. The Marines and twenty men now in the Santa Barbara were removed from the list and the remainder, about 180 men, were divided into two parties: half the topmen—the nimblest and best seamen—would stay in the Calypso, half would go to the Jocasta. Aitken was now commanding the Calypso with Baker, the Third Lieutenant, and Kenton, the Fourth, to help him. Ramage would command the Jocasta, with Southwick. He would have young Orsini with him, and the Surgeon. The reason for Bowen was obvious: it was better that the wounded did not have to be transferred to the Calypso.
Ramage looked inland, past the Pico de Santa Fé, which was now becoming more clearly outlined as the moon lifted over the hills and added its quota to the light from the stars. Over there, he reflected, up in the mountains beyond the Santa Fé, were a group of Indians who, by revolting against the Spanish, had played their part in the recapture of the Jocasta. The soldiers serving in the ship and sent off against the Indians were now back in Santa Cruz, their task completed. Had they returned a day earlier the story of the Jocasta’s recapture would have been different.
The moon was rising with its usual startling speed: the small thin crescent was now clear of the land and a silvery path of reflection was reaching across the water towards him. It was quiet and peaceful here, the two frigates lying secured to the same mooring buoys; a quiet broken only by the occasional irritable squawk of birds—night herons, complaining and chatting in their own little world.
He found himself speaking quietly as he said to Southwick: “Have the men stand by to cast off the Calypso’s lines.” He picked up the speaking-trumpet and called over to Aitken: “Calypso, get under way when you are ready.”
Aitken had obviously been waiting, and a series of orders crackled across the Calypso’s decks: topmen were sent aloft ready to let fall the topsails; the afterguard waited to sheet home the sails and brace up the yards; more men took in the lines securing the ship to the Jocasta.
For the moment the Calypso had to drift clear; bracing up the yards too soon and letting fall the sails would simply lock the two ships together. Ramage jumped on top of the foremost gun on the larboard side of the quarterdeck and looked forward. The gap between the two ships was widening and the Calypso was also moving away crabwise to larboard: although she had no sails set at the moment the wind was moving the ship.
“You’re well clear,” he called to Aitken. Now the Jocasta could also get under way and lead the way to the channel. Wagstaffe, waiting with the Santa Barbara, would have seen the blurred outline of the two frigates gradually divide into two distinct ships, and that would have been enough to start him on his way. And all the while the town of Santa Cruz slept, with perhaps the Mayor wondering why Captain Lopez had not come over to brag, but secure in the knowledge that the Spanish Captain of the Jocasta would have dealt with everything. With any luck the officers and men of the forts too would have celebrated the bloodless capture of a new ship, so that the sentries would be careless.
He looked up at the Castillo de Santa Fé. Was she a threat? The Santa Barbara had stayed out in the middle of the lagoon, hove-to, for a couple of hours, occasionally letting her sails draw as she sailed back up to windward, and there had been no interest shown at the fort. He hoped that the brig’s unusual behaviour would have been interpreted by the soldiers up there in Santa Fé as something to do with guarding the two frigates. Or, more likely, the soldiers had taken no notice; they knew the Santa Barbara was a Spanish ship …
But what would they do when they saw the Calypso get under way? He was gambling that they were likely to do nothing—because the Jocasta followed. That would make it all right; they had not been told the ships would be moving, but obviously someone had forgotten to pass the word.
As the topmen raced up the ratlines to the yards Ramage shouted two orders rarely heard in a frigate because it was unusual for such a ship to be using mooring buoys while in commission.
“Let go forward!”
A splash and then a shout from the fo’c’s’le told Ramage that the buoy had been dropped to starboard.
“Let go aft!”
A call from Southwick told him the buoy and buoy pendants were clear of the rudder. Now the wind was beginning to drift the Jocasta ahead, to the north, with the entrance channel over to the north-west. Ramage pointed the speaking-trumpet aloft to give the next sequence of orders to the topmen which would bring the topsails tumbling down like great curtains.
“Trice up—lay out!”
In the darkness the men scrambled out along the yards, their hands feeling for the gaskets, the canvas strips securing the furled sails, while the studding-sail booms were triced up out of the way.
The next order was to the afterguard down on deck: “Man the topsail sheets!” Again the speaking-trumpet was pointed up at the yards: “Let fall!” The topsails flopped down and at the same instant Ramage snapped: “Sheet home!” The wind slowly pressed out the creases in the canvas; then the sheets put a curve into the sails.
Ramage gave the final orders to the topmen. The studding-sail booms were lowered back into position; then came: “Down from aloft!”
But the topsails were still far from being ready to draw. “Man the topsail halyards,” he shouted, and as soon as the seamen were ready: “Haul taut!”
A shout had the men read
y at the braces, but first came: “Hoist the topsails!”
The yards were hoisted several feet up the masts and then Ramage gave the orders which turned the Jocasta’s wheel to head her two points to larboard, braced the yards round and trimmed the sails on the new course.
Ramage could hear the water bubbling along the frigate’s side as she picked up speed. The lagoon was almost mirror smooth, and the moon, higher now and showing the wind shadows, outlined the channel running north. The Santa Barbara was already sailing along the channel heading for the sea; the Calypso was over on the Jocasta’s larboard quarter, and Aitken was preparing to follow into the channel.
Southwick stood beside Ramage ahead of the binnacle. “Thought we’d hear from the castle up there,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder at Castillo de Santa Fé, now astern of them.
“We might at any moment,” Ramage said, irritated by a superstitious fear that the guns would start firing now Southwick had mentioned them.
“Doubt it. I’ll bet they’re chattering about it though.”
“I’m glad I’m not the commandant. Just imagine it: the two frigates he’s supposed to be protecting suddenly get under way.”
“Aye—does he open fire or doesn’t he?” Southwick said. “And he’s fairly certain that it’s all a mistake. Someone—the Mayor or the Port Captain—notified him that they would be getting under way, but the letter went astray.”
“That’s true, sir: no Spaniard trusts his own folk with paperwork; he knows the things that can go wrong.”
Ramage turned to Jackson and gave him a new course. The Jocasta turned slightly to larboard and then Ramage saw all the way up the channel. The hills cast too many shadows to be sure at this distance that he could see the forts on either side, but he could distinguish the Santa Barbara as a small black patch at the far end.
Then the Jocasta was in the channel with a following wind that was steady. The land was low on each side but within a few hundred yards it began to rise like petrified waves, higher and higher until it ended in the sheer drop of the cliffs forming the entrance.
The Santa Barbara was back in the middle of the channel: she was too far off for him to be sure but it looked as though her topsails were being let fall again. It was likely: Wagstaffe would have clewed them up to take some of the way off the ship while the Marines climbed into the boats.
“That Rennick,” Southwick growled. “I hope he doesn’t lose his head.”
“The only way would be for a round shot to take it off,” Ramage said. “He’s calm enough.”
“Aye, sir, but—”
“We’ll soon see,” Ramage said shortly. “Just inspect the men at quarters.”
The guns had been loaded and run out, and although their twelve-pound shot would make little impression on the forts they might keep the Jocastas happy if they came under fire. He knew from experience there was nothing more demoralizing than being shot at without being able to fire back.
He saw that the Calypso was now in the channel too; Aitken was following less than one hundred yards astern of the Jocasta.
In line with the Calypso’s masts was the Castillo de Santa Fé, brooding over the lagoon. It was not as high as Ramage had originally thought, and the range to a ship at the entrance would be a mile. Just right for trained gunners firing in daylight, but perhaps too much at night for excited men who were rarely drilled.
Ramage picked up the night-glass and looked forward. One of the irritations of using a night-glass was that it gave an inverted picture, and he could see the Santa Barbara sailing along upside down with the sea in place of the sky. However there was no doubt that she was under way; another fifty yards or so and she would be abreast the two forts, while another fifty yards would bring her to the open sea. And there were her boats, hauled up on the narrow strip of beach on each side of the channel. But there were no flashes along the battlements of Castillo San Antonio or El Pilar; neither the firefly-flicker of pistols and muskets nor the red lightning of cannon.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RENNICK had selected his two parties with care. Although he was an officer short—a 36-gun frigate should have a Marine second lieutenant as well as a first lieutenant—at least the Admiral had given him the full complement of NCOs and men. Lacking a second lieutenant, he had put his sergeant in command of the second party, but he was a steady man who had the sharper of the two corporals to back him up.
Every one of the Marines had looked carefully at the hills and the forts as the Santa Barbara had sailed in: half of them had watched to larboard studying San Antonio, half to starboard had watched El Pilar. Rennick knew there was no chance of the men remembering all that they had seen; it was more important that they saw the kind of task that faced them, particularly up the twisting paths, which were little more than goat tracks.
Rennick grinned to himself as he recalled the looks on the faces of the sergeant and corporals as he passed on the orders given him by Captain Ramage. They would all wear dark clothes—if necessary they were to dye or dirty duck trousers. Every man’s face and hands were to be blackened—they had been lucky to find a supply of corks in the boatswain’s store on board the Santa Barbara. The men were to be armed with pistols and cutlasses or pikes; they were not to carry muskets. And a few minutes before they went in to attack they were to tie narrow strips of white cloth round their foreheads to distinguish friend from foe. The blackened faces and dark clothes were to disguise them as they approached the castle; once inside it would not matter.
Now the seamen stopped rowing and the keel of the boat scraped on some coral before running up on the sand with a hiss. The grapnel dropped a few yards out held the boat’s stern so that she did not broach, and Rennick gave his first low-pitched order: “All Marines out and rendezvous at the back of the beach.”
He listened intently, but there was no crack of wood or metal hitting wood: the men were being careful with their cutlasses and pikes. That kind of noise carried a long way on a night like this. A moment later he was vaulting out of the boat, squelching through the water and then up the sharp slope of the beach.
There was the corporal acting as the marker: within a few moments the men were lined up in two ranks. “Everyone has a head-band? Pistols at half-cock?”
All Rennick could really distinguish in the dim light were eyes and the white of teeth: the men’s blackened faces, arms and hands, and their dark clothes, blended with the rocks and bushes behind them.
“First rank, follow me.” With that Rennick led the way along the steep path that snaked upwards from the beach. As the Santa Barbara passed in daylight, he had inspected the path with a telescope. It was steep, it twisted and turned, but it went up towards the Castillo San Antonio, going round a crest near the top and apparently leading to a rear entrance.
As Rennick felt the muscles tighten in the back of his legs he found himself once again worrying about the top of the path. He and Wagstaffe had agreed that the path was used very frequently and the castle was probably supplied from the beach: it would be much easier for a boat to land provisions there so that men could carry them up the path than trying to get supplies across a mile or two of steep hills. That being the case, then the path would naturally go to a back entrance. But if the castle was supplied over the hills then the path was worn by sheep and goats and might not reach the castle …
There would be sentries marching along the battlements, watching to seaward; that much was obvious. No matter how slack the Dons were someone up there would be keeping a lookout, however sleepy-eyed and spasmodic. But what about that back entrance? Was it the only entrance? Was there a sentry at the door? Was the door bolted at night?
He glanced back and saw that although the men were following close behind him they were hard to see: they blended in perfectly. If they had been in uniform their pipeclayed crossbelts would have marked out every man. He looked across at El Pilar, where the sergeant’s party should be well up the path. No shooting, so they had not been detected—yet.
Why would the Spaniards in San Antonio bolt the door? Why a sentry? It all depended on how they regarded San Antonio. Was it a fortress guarding Punta Reina, the headland on which it stood—in which case there would be sentries covering every direction—or was it part of the defence of the harbour entrance, its eyes and guns aimed to seaward, with no one bothering about back doors?
He paused a moment to look back along the path, which was getting steep now. He seemed to be trailing a bulky black caterpillar whose undulations were men climbing upwards, each trying to keep the ordered yard from the man in front. A hiss as a man breathed in sharply, the shrill whine of mosquitoes, the murmur of waves sucking and slapping at the beach below. And the Santa Barbara well clear of the entrance. And then suddenly Rennick saw that the beach where they had landed was indeed out of sight from San Antonio, as they had hoped, hidden by projecting ledges of rock and folds in the hills. He had forgotten to look up towards the castle once they landed on the beach, but he realized now that the Spanish sentries would have seen only the Santa Barbara sailing along the channel and out into the open sea. They might have watched her clew up her topsails, but it was unlikely that they had noticed her cast off the two boats that she had towed the length of the channel. In daylight the sentries on San Antonio would certainly have seen the sergeant’s boat rowing across the channel to El Pilar; but they would not pick her out in the darkness: he could not see her on the distant beach, even though he knew where to look, because there were so many shadows made by rocks and landslides.
