Paolo put his telescope in the binnacle drawer and hurried down to the midshipmen's berth for his quadrant, repeating the formula to himself. But was it the right formula? He knew the height, and he could get the angle from the quadrant. The height was 2300 feet, so - wait, was it 2300 or 3200 feet?
Accidente! where was the quadrant box? He found it propping up some books at the end of a shelf and hurried back up on deck blinking in the sunlight. Mama mia, with stunsails set and running almost dead before the wind it was hard to see forward.
He braced himself against the pitching, checked that the quadrant was set at zero, and then carefully looked through the eyepiece. It was easy enough, he told himself; none of the business of needing to know the exact time. He moved the arm until the reflection of the peak rested on the horizon, and then looked at the scale.
"Take another one, " Southwick growled. "Never rely on just one! "
Paolo wasn't sure what had happened with the first, but the second showed a difference of more than a degree. Fortunately the third agreed with the second and he hurriedly set the quadrant at zero again and took a fourth. The last three were the same.
But what was the height of San Juan, the other ingredient he needed? He could sneak into Mr Southwick's cabin and look at the chart (it was just his bad luck that it was not on top of the binnacle box; it would be later on, when the dampness had gone out of the air), but someone might think he was trying to steal something.
"Mr Orsini . . ."
The Master's voice had an odd tone.
"Sir?"
"You are sure of the angle?"
"Yes, sir: three were identical."
"What happened to the fourth?"
"I don't know, sir." There was no fooling the Master; he had sharper eyes than Uncle Nicholas.
"So now you take the angle and the height and you look it up in the tables, eh?" "Yes, sir."
"What was the height of San Juan?"
Accidente! Paolo felt someone had put the evil eye on him this morning. Was it 3200 or 2300? Better too high than too low - or was it? He tried to picture which would give the furthest distance, but mathematics were a confusing subject which he learned by rote.
"3200 feet, sir."
"Good, it's not often you remember a figure correctly, " Southwick grumbled. "Now, off with you and work it out."
Paolo hurried below, carefully wiped the quadrant with the oily rag kept in the box for the purpose - spray and even the damp salt air soon corroded the brass - and put it away. A pencil, a piece of paper and the tables ... He turned to the back of the tables, where he had long ago written notes. "Distance off by vertical angle" - and there was the formula. Hurriedly he worked out the sum and there was the answer. Two miles. But it couldn't be! He did the sum again - just over seven miles. He did the sum a third time and the answer was still seven, and he scurried up the ladder to report to the Master.
But Mr Southwick seemed far from pleased with the news; Paolo saw that the bushy grey eyebrows were pulled down over his eyes like the portcullis of the castle at Volterra.
"Just over seven miles, Mr Orsini? When was that?"
"Well, sir, when I took the angle."
"And have you any idea how long ago that was?" Southwick tapped his watch. "A quarter of an hour ago, Mr Orsini; fifteen whole minutes."
"Yes, sir, " said Paolo nervously.
"And we are making nearly ten knots, Mr Orsini, " Southwick said relentlessly. "Will you favour me by telling me how far the ship has travelled in fifteen minutes?"
Paolo's mind went blank, then he groped in his memory. One knot was one mile in an hour, which was a quarter of a mile in a quarter of an hour. So ten knots was - what?
"Two miles, sir?" he said hopefully, but the Master's furious expression made him think again. A quarter of a mile at one knot. So at ten knots - why, ten quarters! So simple! "One and a half miles, sir! "
"Mr Orsini, " Southwick said firmly, "I've no doubt that you have already calculated how far the ship travels in a quarter of an hour if she is making one knot."
"Yes, sir. A quarter of a mile."
"So if you multiply a quarter by ten, you get one and a half?"
"No, sir, " Paolo admitted ruefully, "two and a half."
"Thank you, " Southwick said sarcastically. "Just bear in mind that an error of a mile in waters like these is more than enough to see the ship hit a shoal."
"Yes, sir. It won't happen again."
"It will, Mr Orsini, it will, " Southwick said sadly. "You can knot and splice with the best o' them, but your mathematics. . ."
Just like Mr Ramage, Southwick reflected. The Captain was a fine seaman; he could handle a ship with less effort than a skilled horseman could ride a quiet nag through a gateway, but tell him that A over B equals C and ask him how to calculate what A was and his eyes went glazed. Still, one had to be fair: Southwick knew his mathematics but Bowen nearly always beat him at chess; and the surgeon could cut off a man's leg and sew it all up, but he couldn't hold a candle to the Captain when it came to guessing how the enemy would react in a given situation. And neither Aitken nor Wagstaffe, competent enough officers though they were, could spot trouble under a distant cloud like the Captain and have the ship snugly reefed down by the time a wicked squall came out of nowhere.
"The wake looks like a snake with colic, " he growled at the quartermaster. "Don't let them use so much wheel."
The big island was approaching fast now, and with the sun lifting higher he did not like the haze that was beginning to dull the outlines of the mountains, yet the glass was steady enough. That was the trouble with this damned coast; there were so many local winds. Maracaibo, another three hundred miles along the coast, was the worst; he had a note in his reference book of the chubasco which plagued the Gulf of Venezuela between May and August, coming up in the late afternoon and blowing a full gale and sometimes more for an hour, and then dying down and leaving you half-drowning in torrential rain. Along this stretch of the coast - more towards La Guaira, rather - the calderetas came screaming down from the mountains, hot, sharp blasts which could send masts by the board. His notebook mentioned just that; it was information from another master who had sailed along this coast, but there was no reference to what warning the calderetas gave - if any.
He looked at his watch: it wanted a few minutes to eight. Aitken would be on deck shortly to relieve him, so he picked up the slate and brought the details up to date.
Course, speed, distance run ... Damnation, he was tired.
The Pearl Island. It sounded romantic enough, but he would be glad when it dropped over the horizon astern and the Saddle of Caracas came in sight. That was the one thing that made a landfall at La Guaira an easy task: the high ridge joining three peaks, the Silla de Caracas, stuck out like humps on camels, with one of them only three miles from La Guaira itself. What a ride those messengers must be having, galloping westwards to tell the Captain-General in Caracas that the English heretics had just stolen La Perla from Santa Cruz. Southwick grinned to himself as he imagined the Mayor of Santa Cruz drafting the letter.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At daybreak the following morning the Jocasta was within fifteen miles of La Guaira, running along a jagged coast where mountain peak after mountain peak reared up only a few miles from the shore, the lower slopes covered with thick green forests. The coastline was a series of bold cliffs, looking like bastions defending the coastline from the constant battering of the sea, broken by occasional gaps where sandy beaches were backed by palm trees. Almost everywhere a heavy surf broke with a thunder that could be heard a mile offshore, spray erupting in white clouds as the waves surged along the rocks.