"Senor, " Ramage said, his voice taking on a harsher note, "although I am prepared to satisfy your curiosity, you are hardly in a position to interrogate me."
"All right, I believe you, " the Mayor said hurriedly. "But what is to become of us?"
"You are prisoners for the moment."
"But that is ridiculous! Why, we are close by the fortress -"
"Stop ranting, " the Colonel said curtly. "You are not addressing a junta. No one in the fort will open fire on a frigate flying a Spanish flag, especially since they know their commanding officer is on board. And this man said we were prisoners 'for the moment'." He looked directly at Ramage. "Do I understand you are not going to take us away?"
"I hope not, " Ramage said. "You have much to do after the caldereta. Repairing damage to the houses, finding the ship ..."
"The ship! " the Mayor exclaimed. "How can we search for her when we have no vessels -" He broke off, conscious that the Port Captain and the Colonel had both turned to stare at him.
"You have no need to worry, " Ramage said smoothly, thankful that the Mayor had leapt into what was at best crude trap. "She had not drifted far."
"How do you know?" the Port Captain asked warily
"Senor, please! " Ramage said in an offended voice. “The caldereta drags her from her anchors, she drifts before the wind . . ."
"But she hasn't sailed back! "
Ramage thought quickly. "She could hardly sail back if she lost her masts and was captured by the enemy."
"Caramba! " the Mayor exclaimed, "we are ruined! What will the Viceroy -" Again he broke off, embarrassed that once again he had given something away.
"The fortune of war, " Ramage said philosophically, seeing
a clear picture of the merchant ship slowly beating her way back to La Guaira, perhaps even now in sight from the masthead.
"Well, gentlemen, " he said, standing up, "I'll see you back to your boat."
"You mean we are free?" the Mayor asked excitedly. He jumped up and, forgetting how low the cabin was, cracked his head on a beam. He subsided on the settee, glassy-eyed.
The Colonel looked down at him coldly and then turned to Ramage and said: "Thank you. I do not know how you captured this ship in Santa Cruz; I would not have thought even a rowing boat could get past the forts."
"The forts are now in ruins, " Ramage said quietly.
The Colonel went pale. "How many English ships made the attack?"
"One - a frigate similar to this."
"Who commanded her?"
"I did."
"Where is she now?"
"Waiting for us, " Ramage said. "One of my officers is commanding her."
"Your Admiral will be pleased to see you, " the Colonel said, his voice a mixture of bitterness and admiration. "The caldereta has made you a rich man."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The white houses of La Guaira were just dropping below the horizon as Ramage took the weights off the chart and let it roll up with a snap. He and Southwick had finally, at the end of a series of guesses, estimated the merchant ship's present position.
They had to assume that the caldereta had behaved in the same way at La Guaira as it had when it hit the Jocasta. It would have parted the merchant ship's cables and driven her northwards for about one and a half hours - providing she had not capsized. In that time she would have drifted up to eight miles. Then the wind had slowly backed, taking half to three-quarters of an hour to get round to the east. In that time the ship would have drifted another four miles or so in a north-westerly direction. After that, assuming she had not been able to set any sail, she would have drifted westwards, carried by both wind and current, for four hours, covering sixteen to twenty miles. The cross on the chart showed where she should be at this moment.
Ramage had pencilled on the chart her probable track: a dog-leg about twenty-eight miles long, setting the ship well down to the west and about ten miles offshore.
"There's a lot of 'if’ and 'maybe', " Southwick had grumbled. "If she hasn't capsized, if she drifts at this speed or that, maybe her masts went by the board ..."
"It'll take us about five hours to get down to her, ” Ramage said. "If she can set any sail naturally we'll meet her sooner. We should sight her before it's dark."
"If she's still afloat. Do you think she’s likely to have capsized, sir?"
Ramage shook his head. "No, I think she was so close in to the shore that it might have saved her when it first started blowing. It was only during the first few minutes that we nearly capsized, until we could run off before it."
"It seemed like hours, " Southwick commented.
"Yes. Well, her cables couldn't take the strain and eventually they parted and she began drifting out to sea. They knew what to expect, and I think they might have been able to keep her under control. I hope so, anyway."
"I'm doubtful about our estimates of the speed at which she's drifting."
"I agree. I think she'll be slower. So we're likely to see her more to the south-west. But the visibility is good and the lookouts have telescopes."
The first hail from the mainmasthead three hours later warned that there was a small boat on the starboard bow, and the Jocasta bore up to find it was empty. The second hail, half an hour after that, told of three boats on the starboard bow, and they too were empty and nearly sunk.
Southwick plotted their positions and then came up to report to Ramage. "They drifted in the direction we expected, sir. A lot slower, but o' course they're half-full of water and don't have the windage of a merchant ship."
The next hail revealed a drogher drifting along, her mainsail in shreds and floating low in the water. The two men on board, taken off by one of the Jocasta's boats, reported that the other three men in the crew had been washed overboard. More important, they told Ramage that while the caldereta was blowing they had seen the merchant ship drifting past them apparently undamaged.
This news had cheered Southwick. "We'll soon sight her beating up towards us, " he told Aitken, but the young Scot was gloomy: "If she could set any canvas, she'd be in sight by now. Her topsails, anyway."
The First Lieutenant was echoing Ramage's thoughts. The men from the drogher - now below under guard, thankful at having been rescued but depressed at being prisoners - had been far from sure when they had seen the merchant ship: they could not say whether it was three minutes after the wind parted their anchor cable or thirty; they explained that they had been fighting to stifle the mainsail, which parted the gaskets, and then busy pumping to save the vessel.
"You think she's gone?" Southwick asked Aitken.
"Aye - probably capsized just to spite us. We must have used up all our luck at Santa Cruz."
Ramage feared that Aitken's view was shared by most of the ship's company, who had been full of zest as they left La Guaira. Now, four hours later, the laughing and teasing had gone; they were cheerful enough, but no longer excited.
If he was honest, he had to admit he was losing hope; it had been something of a gamble from the start. It was satisfying to know that if the merchant ship had been in La Guaira there would have been no difficulty in capturing her and towing her out. No one could anticipate Nature playing such a trick; one which robbed both the Spanish and the British with the same savage impartiality.
"Deck there! "
The hail was from the lookout at the foremasthead, and Ramage listened as Aitken answered: "Deck here! "
"Masts, sir, looks like three masts one point on the larboard bow."
"No sails set?"
"No, sir; leastways, not uppers."
"Can you make out the hull?"
"No, sir, only the topmasts. Lying north and south, they are."