"We'll soon know. I hadn't realized that Isla de Margarita was so mountainous."
"Aye, that peak, San Juan they call it, is more than three thousand feet high. They reckon you can see it seventy-five miles away in clear weather."
Ramage nodded. "There are more mountain peaks along this coast than I thought existed! "
"It's an iron-bound coast for sure, " Southwick said soberly. "This ahead might be called the Pearl Island but it's a rare old pile of rock! I wonder if they still find pearls?"
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. "I don't see why not. It depends on the oysters! "
"They've probably cleaned them all out, " Southwick said gloomily.
"I'm sure the King of Spain has enough pearls in his crown hy now, " Ramage said vaguely, thinking of breakfast and then a few hours' sleep. "Call me as soon as we reach the Margarita Channel."
Southwick watched Ramage disappear down the companionway and then took off his hat with all the ceremony of a bishop removing his mitre. The wind blew through his white hair and refreshed him. There were times when he felt his years. However, he felt happier now, since he was at last convinced that the Captain had given Rennick the job of capturing Castillo San Antonio only because he wanted the Master on board for the passage out of Santa Cruz.
He had been with Mr Ramage enough years now to recognize most of his moods, but he was damned if he could understand some of them. Just now, for example, he had been pacing the deck with a face as long as a yard of pump water, and snappy and sarcastic as a henpecked parson. Why? He should have been as cheerful as a bandmaster; he had just done the impossible - here was the Jocasta bowling along the coast under stunsails, and less than twelve hours ago she was moored in Santa Cruz with a Spanish captain strutting her quarterdeck. Why the long face? Yet while going in to Santa Cruz with the Calypso, playing a game of bluff where the slightest mistake would have seen the frigate blown out of the water by the batteries, the Captain had had a grin on his face like a curate who had just converted the Devil.
Perhaps he was worried about chasing after this merchant ship at La Guaira. If the Jocasta ran up on an uncharted reef - he looked ahead nervously and then glanced at the binnacle - it would be hard to explain away to the Admiral. Would he understand how that phrase "a particular cargo" had intrigued them all?
He looked astern at the Jocasta's wake. The wind was freshening as the sun came up and with the sails rap full the ship would be making more than ten knots within half an hour. He eyed the stunsail booms projecting out from the ends of the yards and wondered when they were last inspected for rot. The metal fittings were rusty - he could see stained wood from down here.
Margarita was coming up fast now. He turned to Orsini, who was pacing the deck, telescope under his arm, and no doubt dreaming, like most midshipmen on a bright sunny day, of commanding his own frigate.
"Mr Orsini! You see the island of Margarita ahead of us, on the starboard bow?"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"The tall peak is Cerro San Juan, and it is 3200 feet high. Out with your quadrant, then, and take a vertical angle and tell me how far off it is. Step lively, though, we're approaching it at nearly ten knots! "
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. . ."