Rondin said quietly, 'I think I can guess that next question of yours. If I'd thought of it earlier, we might have solved all this business long ago, Instead it takes a young naval lieutenant who hasn't been in Grenada for more than a few hours!'
Ramage smiled. 'I think you'd better hear the question first and make sure it's the same.'
'It is; I'm certain of that. It's the key to the whole thing. But you ask it!'
'Very, well. Where do the privateersmen dispose of the cargoes since these are all British islands?'
The ship-owner nodded. 'And all the time we could only think of our ships being lost! We went to see the Governor; the Governor wrote to Admiral Robinson, and he sent frigates which searched... If only I'd sat down and thought!'
'The trade returns for each of the islands,' Ramage said. 'How often are they produced? I mean, can we compare each island's exports to England for say, each of the last six months and see which one's suddenly increased?'
Rondin stood up and began walking back and forth across the room, staring out over the lagoon and towards the setting sun. Then he began talking angrily.
'We can't get those figures for months but, by God, they'll not only give the answer but they'll show what's happening. What a fool I am! Hundreds of tons of produce leaving Grenada and then vanishing—yet it can't vanish! But I of all men should have known: nothing has a commercial value unless there's a market for it. Somewhere, somehow, those hundreds of tons of stolen produce are being sold and shipped to England. But sold by whom—and to whom?'
He turned to Ramage, arms outstretched. 'Give me a frank answer. Do you think that's the only possibility? That after the cargoes are stolen, they're shipped out of some other island in the normal way of trade—legally as it were? That these thieves have a way of channelling their booty through plantation-owners?'
Ramage nodded. 'It's my guess; as you've just said, nothing has a value unless there's a market for it. At least, not in this sense. Who would systematically steal something if he couldn't dispose of it?'
Rondin flopped down in his chair and drained his glass with a gesture that seemed to Ramage approaching despair. Bellowing for the butler to refill it, he muttered: 'It means our own people are betraying us: other plantation-owners in some other island.' >
'Only one or two, perhaps,' Ramage pointed out, pausing as the butler came in, refilled Rondin's glass, noted Ram age's was still untouched, and left the room again.
'But since the trade returns can't help us,' he continued, 'we're almost back where we started—watching the schooners sailing out of the harbour entrance and vanishing.'
'Yes—forgive me young man: this is a hard blow for a man in my position. Competition in business, yes that's fair and one expects it; but treachery...'
Back on board the Triton Ramage read through the papers given him by Rondin, thought briefly of the captured schooners' cargoes, and decided to read the papers yet again, despite the fact the heat made him feel sleepy. The figures of the losses were detailed. In the past four months, thirty-one schooners had sailed from Grenada for Martinique and twenty-one had been captured. As he read the names and the dates they sailed the drowsiness vanished: there was a pattern!
If a schooner sailed several days after another, it was captured. If a third sailed within two days it invariably arrived safely in Martinique but a fourth leaving a couple of days later would be captured. When the fifth and sixth sailed almost immediately, they'd get through. But not the seventh if it waited two or three days.
He rubbed his forehead, excited but puzzled. A pattern, yes, but what was its significance? Then in a few moments it dawned on him that the pattern was set by the time it took to unload one schooner. Unload and get rid of the cargo, to be more precise.
Again he checked through the list of ships and dates. No, although there was not one instance where the privateers had taken a schooner less than four days after capturing another, there were many cases where schooners had arrived safely in Martinique having sailed less man four days after one which had been captured.
Four days... yet Rondin had assured him it was not difficult to unload a schooner in one day, though more usually it took two.
Why four days, men? Surely the privateersmen weren't short of men? Ramage pictured them swinging the sacks of cocoa beans and barrels of molasses up and out of the holds and over the side on to the jetty then—jetty! Did they have a jetty? A jetty with a road which carts could use to carry away sacks and barrels?
Perhaps not, he thought excitedly; supposing they had to unload in some isolated spot which could be reached only along tracks suitable for pack animals?
One or two sacks for each animal... Sacks which if left piled up on the ground would spoil in the heavy tropical showers: molasses barrels which would split and leak in the heat of the sun ... That could reduce the unloading time to four days: four days in which they dare not bring in another prize.
Dare not? The cargo would be safe enough if left in the schooner's hold. Well, that raised another question: why, with one prize being unloaded in their lair, did the privateers-men let another potential prize escape them? Why not capture it, leave the hatch covers on, and unload it at their leisure?
Again his imagination wandered. He thought of warships waiting at anchor for powder hoys to arrive alongside; of dozens of merchantmen lying at anchor in the Thames after a big convoy arrived in the London river at the end of a voyage from halfway round the world. At anchor, waiting until there was a space at a dock... space at a dock.
Was there room enough only for one vessel where the privateers unloaded the prize schooners—and perhaps the privateers as well? Not enough room for two? Or some reason why mere shouldn't be two? That made sense; it answered a question—or provided a possible answer.
Assume a schooner carried a hundred tons of cargo in hundredweight sacks—2,000 sacks. And a mule could carry, say, four sacks, a donkey two, a human being one. Five hundred mule trips, a thousand donkey trips...
How the devil would privateersmen—even if in league with many plantation-owners—get enough mules or donkeys or slaves to carry that number of sacks very far? Yet surely it had to be carried a good distance to get it to a port where it could be loaded again. Unless...
He reached up for charts rolled up in the rack above his head; charts covering the islands between Grenada and Martinique, and began looking at the bays and inlets. There were dozens: the outline of each island was irregular, like a broken piece of cheese, the bays and inlets bitten out by rats.
He decided to rule out the east coasts of the island, where the bays and lagoons took the full force of the Atlantic swell, because no privateers would dare use them: too many coral reefs, and the entrances too narrow to beat out in the prevailing easterly winds to snatch their next prize.
So the hiding places had to be on the south, north or (most probably) western side of an island. The bay he was looking for would be almost completely enclosed—for concealment. There'd probably be deep water dose up to the shore—for unloading the schooners. And not too far from a larger port—for carrying the stolen cargoes overland.
The major factor was concealment. A concealed bay, or a bay in which a schooner and a privateer could hide without being seen from to seaward or being too obvious from the land. After half an hour's search of the charts he knew there was only one way of finding the likely ones—he'd have to go up the islands in the Triton and look. He hadn't yet paid a courtesy call on the Governor, but that would have to wait. He shouted to the sentry to pass the word for the Master.