A quick glance showed Ramage that the Mayor of Santa Cruz, although given a lot of power and acting more like a governor, was very careful when drawing up orders to make it clear that he was acting for the junta. If wrong orders were given, the Mayor was obviously determined that his council would at least share the blame. Every order was issued on behalf of the junta, and to make doubly sure the Mayor listed the members present at each meeting. They ranged from the judge to the city treasurer; ten of the city's leading citizens.
The Mayor's letters dealt mostly with routine matters - reporting that casks of provisions had arrived and were ready for Velasquez, asking about the progress being made in refitting the ship, complaining of the strain on the city's finances caused by the need to feed all the troops sent on board . . . Then the almost hysterical warning to Velasquez of the insurrection among the Indians in the mountains, followed by a peremptory order (in the name of the junta) to send the troops on shore for them to march inland and put down the insurrection.
The Mayor was clearly happiest when forwarding instructions to Velasquez which came from the capital of the province, Caracas, a few miles inland from the port of La Guaira. "His Excellency the Captain-General has honoured me with his latest orders, which the junta of Santa Cruz forwards to you and which I direct you to obey with all speed . . ." was his regular formula.
Ramage had begun by reading the Mayor's letters on the assumption that they would give the latest orders to Velasquez, but by the time he had read a dozen it was clear that they dealt mostly with provisioning and manning. Anything of any importance from the Captain-General had been sent direct to Velasquez. He tied up the Mayor's letters again and with a sigh turned to those from the Captain-General. Letters from the Admiralty in London were usually brief to the point of being taciturn; only formal documents like commissions used archaic and flowery language. But the Spanish were different: a letter from the Mayor telling Velasquez that ten casks of rice and five of chick peas were being sent to Santa Cruz from La Guaira meant three lines of elaborate introduction and another three to end the letter.
The first he read from the Captain-General was even worse: His Excellency referred not only to his junta - which dealt with the whole province "on behalf of his sacred Catholic Majesty" - but to the head of every department involved in the particular order. Hardly believing what he read, Ramage saw that the letter was telling Velasquez that an application for timber to replace some deck planking was not approved. Velasquez's request, the Captain-General wrote, had been submitted to the junta, which had referred it to the Intendente, the man who controlled the province's treasury. The Intendente passed it to the Commander of the Privateering Branch (apparently, Ramage noted, the Jocasta had been commissioned under the Spanish flag as a privateer, not taken into the Navy). The worthy commander had refused to pay for the wood, saying that "because of recent decisions" it was not now an item that could be charged against the Privateering Branch's funds, which were for operating privateers, and anyway had been exhausted.
The request, the Captain-General told Velasquez with all the relish of a bureaucrat saying no, had therefore been referred back once again to the Intendente, who had refused to provide the money because the junta had decided a year ago that the ship was not a regular ship of war but a privateer, and as such was not the concern of the Royal Treasury, whose funds ("which are for the moment exhausted") the Intendente administered.
Ramage, fascinated at the way a few planks of wood could cause so much trouble, re-read the letter and several others dealing with refitting the ship. Finally he realized that the Captain-General, who was the administrative ruler of the province, was at loggerheads with the Intendente, who was the head of the Treasury, and that the cause of their quarrel was the control of the Jocasta.
As a ship of the Spanish Navy she would come under the general control of the Ministry of Marine in Madrid and, if based at La Guaira, the local control of the Captain-General, with the Royal Treasury in Caracas - the Intendente, in other words - paying the bills. As privateer, she would still be under the general control of the Captain-General, but the commander of the Privateering Branch would decide how she operated, and would pay her expenses out of the Privateering Branch funds.
All that seemed straightforward but, Ramage discovered, the ship had recently been ordered by Madrid to sail to Havana and then on to Spain, which meant that the Privateering Branch would lose her, and obviously the commander did not want to pay for anything more, claiming that the Royal Treasury should foot the bill. But the Intendente would not agree - she was not a ship of the Spanish Navy (though, Ramage could see, it was clear that once she arrived in Spain she would be added to the Fleet), because she had been commissioned as a privateer.
It was hard luck for the Privateering Branch: the letters made it clear that the Branch had paid for all the refitting so far but as soon as she was ready to go to sea. she was ordered to Havana, bound for Spain. It said a lot about Spanish officials that it had taken them more than a year to commission the ship, and that the chattering of clerks - people like the Intendente might be higher up the scale, but they still had clerks' mentalities - meant that although the Jocasta had been in Spanish hands for two years all they had done was move her from La Guaira to Santa Cruz. Those Spanish clerks were the best allies that Britain had, Ramage reflected. The Calypso frigate had winkled her out of Santa Cruz, but the clerks had quite effectively seen to it that she stayed there until the Calypso arrived. Did his Most Catholic Majesty realize that, albeit unwittingly, his clerks were guilty of treason?
He had just picked up the next batch of the Captain-General's letters, hoping to find the latest orders to Velasquez, when he heard someone hurrying down the companionway, and a moment later the sentry called: "Mr Orsini, sir! "
Paolo knocked on the door and came in, his eyes glinting with excitement in the dim lanternlight. "Mr Southwick's compliments, sir: he says it wants about five minutes before the castles blow up! "
Ramage was tired; he was anxious to know Velasquez's orders. The castles would blow up if Rennick and his sergeant had done their work properly - and providing the slow matches burned true. But there was nothing that Nicholas Ramage, Captain, could do to help or hinder the process. For that matter, it was of no consequence as far as his orders were concerned whether the castles blew up or not. Admiral Davis would lose no sleep if both fuses went out: he would have the Jocasta back again, which was all that mattered. The castles were the bonus, and anyway Ramage wanted to continue reading the letters. But the cabin was hot and stuffy and Paolo was holding the door open, waiting to follow him on deck. How like Gianna the boy was; the same heart-shaped face, the same eyes.
Ramage put the papers in the top drawer, locked it, and stood up to find Paolo holding out a cutlass, but Ramage motioned it away.
"The ship's company aren't about to mutiny, are they, Paolo?"
"No, sir, " the boy said, "but we have more than a hundred Spanish prisoners on board! "
Ramage took the cutlass and slipped the belt over his shoulder. In the excitement of sailing out of Santa Cruz he had forgotten the prisoners; seizing the ship seemed like something that had happened last week.
On deck the stars and waning moon were enough to light up the ship. Southwick, incongruous in his mutineer's garb, waved to the south: "I didn't think you'd want to miss the excitement, sir. Any minute now, taking half an hour from the time we saw the lights."
"It should be quite a sight, " Ramage said, making an effort to sound cheerful so as not to spoil an otherwise exciting occasion: nearly every man on board except the lookouts was up in the rigging or on the hammock nettings - Southwick had obviously given permission - eagerly staring at the top of the cliffs.