Ramage looked down at the chart spread on the binnacle box and then glanced up at the mountains. There were two ridges, the nearest with peaks rising to 4000 feet, the second which soared up to 9000 or more. And the three peaks that concerned him most were clear enough: the nearest was Izcaragua, nearly 8000 feet high; then six miles to the west was Pico de Naguata, the highest at 9000 feet, and joined by a long ridge which ran for seven miles to join Pico Avila, 7000 feet high and only three miles from La Guaira. Caracas, the capital of the province, was several miles inland, high among the mountains. There, thought Ramage, the Captain-General will soon be sitting down to his breakfast, blissfully unaware that horsemen are galloping over the mountains to warn him that La Perla has gone. Before they arrived, with luck, more horsemen would be galloping up the twisting road from La Guaira to tell him that La Perla was off the port.
La Guaira - he knew precious little about it. An open anchorage with deep water close to the shore, the port built on a narrow plain between two masses of rock . . . That could be almost anywhere. It was defended by the Trinchera Bastion on the eastern side and by El Vigia, a castle overlooking the port from a height of about four hundred feet. According to Southwick the anchorage was occasionally swept by enormous rollers from the north, coming two or three at a time; walls of water sometimes two miles long which wrenched ships from their anchors and tossed them up on the beach like driftwood.
And that, Ramage thought, is all we know about La Guaira, and entirely due to Southwick's habit of filling notebooks with details of places whenever he could find someone who had been there. It was the main port of the province of Caracas, and (in more peaceful times) fresh water could be obtained from a small reservoir which had been made some five hundred feet above the town by damming up a river. Southwick's notebook added that the main exports were cocoa, coffee, hides, dyewood and medicinal roots. A "particular cargo" comprising those mundane items and captured only by risking the Jocasta would make Admiral Davis explode with more flame and violence than had destroyed El Pilar . . .
Rennick was parading his Marines. They looked smart enough, and Ramage thought he detected a satisfied swagger in their bearing since they had blown up the forts. It would do no harm; they had a right to be proud of themselves and their officer. Although even Rennick did not know it yet, they would soon have to go below to take off their uniforms and put on seamen's clothing. Any sharp-eyed watcher on shore with a telescope would spot those uniforms and know they were not Spanish; moreover, some of the Jocasta's mutineers might be living in La Guaira, only too anxious to help their Spanish masters.
The Marines to wear seamen's clothes, Ramage reflected, is about all I have decided about how we are going to cut out this merchant ship. Rennick has paraded his men, the gunner has been round inspecting the guns, Southwick and the bosun have checked over the tiller ropes and are now busy making sure that they missed nothing in yesterday's examination of sheets, braces and halyards. Aitken has the conn, and every one of them, from the First Lieutenant to the cook's mate, assumes that Mr Ramage has a completely foolproof plan for cutting out the ship, just as they were now convinced that he planned the Jocasta's capture to the last detail from the first moment he sighted the Santa Barbara.
His plan at the moment was to haul down that Spanish ensign as soon as possible; the sooner the Jocasta was sailing under her proper colours the better, although for the time being, to avoid raising the alarm, because they were now rarely a mile from the shore, the red and gold flag of Spain was streaming in the wind. The frigate was still La Perla as far as the Spaniards were concerned - at least at this end of the Main.
Everyone on board was cheerful enough - except Paolo. Since the funeral services he had been taking many vertical angles of every peak that Southwick clapped eyes on and had the height noted on the chart. Ramage doubted if Paolo's book of tables had ever been used so much as it had in the past hour or two. The Master was being deliberately harsh with the boy, beginning with the way he stood as he held the quadrant. "Balance yourself as the ship rolls by swaying your body from the hips upwards, " he had growled. "Don't move your buttocks; you look like a fishwife walking down Billingsgate Hill! "
Now half a dozen seamen were hoisting up the grindstone: after the fighting across the Jocasta's decks there were many cutlasses with nicks in the blades which would have to be ground out, and Ramage shuddered at the thought of having to listen to the scraping once again. The cook would come up on deck soon, announcing to anyone who cared to listen that he had "to put a sharp" on his cleavers: cutting up salt tack always took the edge off them. He always appeared when the grindstone was set up; he always made the same announcement, and no one ever listened. But when they had boarded the Jocasta, Ramage had seen the cook join one of the boarding parties, a meat cleaver in each hand. He was a deceptive man, so thin he seemed to be starving, and normally so quiet that no one would guess he enjoyed nothing better than boarding an enemy ship.
Once again Ramage looked along the line of mountains. He had never seen a shoreline so constantly beaten by rollers; there was always a jagged line of boiling surf thundering into the foot of the cliffs, flinging up fine spray which hung as a heavy mist, blurring the slots and crevices. Yesterday he had occasionally seen small boats inshore, fishermen from the villages built wherever there was a gap in the cliffs or where a bend in the coast formed a sheltered bay and gave them a lee. They must be hardy men, working under a blazing sun with a heavy sea running most of the time. Presumably starvation faced them if a week of heavy rollers prevented them from launching their boats.
The Jocasta was making a fast passage: with this soldier's wind the hourly cast of the log showed she was making an effortless ten knots. During the night he had expected the stunsails to carry away at times as occasional but brief gusts came up astern without warning.
The Main was a strange and unpredictable coast, and he wished he had sailed it before. This curious light over the mountains, for instance: as the sun came up it had not washed the peaks in its usual pinkness; instead it had cast a cold, almost whitish light, bringing with it an almost frightening clarity and throwing harsh, sharp-edged shadows. Every crack and crevice, valley and distant precipice showed up in the telescope as though it was only five miles away, instead of twenty. In contrast, there had been a haze yesterday which, up in the Leeward and Windward Islands, always warned of strong winds to come. Now today there was this clearness. It could mean anything or nothing. Southwick's notebook referred to calderetas sweeping down from the mountains, but gave no further details. Still, if they occurred only once or twice in a year there was no reason to suppose they would bother the Jocasta . . .
He was getting jumpy; it was as simple as that. He had been lucky at Santa Cruz and if he had had any sense he would be on his way back to English Harbour. Instead he was bound for La Guaira, commanding - as far as any onlooker was concerned - His Most Catholic Majesty's frigate La Perla. Only another dozen miles to go; already Pico Avila was looming up high, towering over La Guaira just as Pico de Santa Fe stood at the back of Santa Cruz.
He looked down at his clothes. Providing he did not wear a hat, they were similar enough to the Spanish naval uniform. Southwick, with his chubby face and flowing white hair, would hardly pass for a Spaniard but, he told himself, people usually saw what they expected to see: at La Guaira they were waiting for Captain Velasquez to arrive in La Perla . . .