CHAPTER TWELVE

 The sun was low enough to throw the eastern sides of the tumbling hills and cone-shaped Pico de Santa Fe into deep shadow. The channel into Santa Cruz was now a dark slot cut through the cliffs, a forbidding canyon at the far end of which Ramage could just see the lagoon with the castle of Santa Fe crouched at the foot of the peak, a square block of stone, its battlements like bared teeth, its guns covering every inch of the entrance.

 The wind was light, the sky clear except for streaks of cloud on the horizon, and Ramage felt strangely free. He looked down at his bare feet and was vaguely surprised to see his toes on the planking of the quarterdeck, the flesh startlingly white compared with his tanned hands. The white duck trousers were suitably creased and grubby but a good deal more comfortable than breeches and stockings. A bloodstained purser's shirt, open at the neck, felt light and loose after years of wearing a stock and heavy uniform coat. His hair was bound at the back with a bit of cord and like everyone else on board he was unshaven and unwashed. It took very little to change the Calypso into a ship apparently run by mutineers.

 Southwick was pacing round the quarterdeck like a bear dressed up for a carnival: he too was wearing a pair of purser's trousers and a bloodstained shirt, and his usually unruly white hair looked more than ever like a twice-used mop. He had a pistol tucked into the top of his trousers; his great sword slapped against his leg as he walked. The once-smart First Lieutenant now wore a red shirt; his white duck trousers were smeared with blood and dirt. A black cloth served as a scarf tied over his hair and gave him the look of a Highland brigand.

 The Calypso's cook was - under orders - swaggering round the ship with a great meat cleaver hanging from his waist; thirty men were perched in various parts of the rigging while a dozen more were skylarking, occasionally scrambling down the mainstay. The frigate yawed from time to time, and Ramage knew that all the Spaniards watching from Castillo San Antonio and its twin of El Pilar must realize she was being badly sailed. What they did not see was Jackson, acting as quartermaster and giving the orders to the men at the wheel which produced the sudden flapping of the topsails. The courses and topgallants were badly furled - it had taken Southwick an hour before he was satisfied with them, straining his patience as he complained that it was harder to furl them badly than neatly.

 Ramage walked aft, hitching at the cutlass belt over his shoulder and kicking at a piece of bread lying on the deck. The ship stank of rum; not fifteen minutes ago Southwick and the purser had sluiced a bucket of it over the quarterdeck and now a barrel was lashed against the skylight with half a dozen mugs beside it. It normally held forty gallons of rum and was obviously placed so that any man could have a mugful when he felt like it - or so it would seem to a casual eye.

 The Santa Barbara was following a hundred yards astern, sailing in the Calypso's wake, the red, gold and red of the Spanish flag streaming out in the breeze. From her foremast flew two flag signals - "Lead the fleet" and "Keep in close order". The Calypso, like an obedient bear obeying a small boy, was leading the way into Santa Cruz, obviously a prize. Instead of the Red Ensign, she also flew the flag of Spain; a flag of the same size as the one hoisted in the Santa Barbara, which had obviously supplied it. And from her foreyardarm the frigate flew two more flags which the Spanish lookouts should by now have interpreted: a plain red flag - the "bloody flag" of buccaneer days and now the symbol of revolution - and below it, obviously vanquished, a Red Ensign.

 "Brother Jackson, " Ramage called, "I'll trouble you to bear up for a moment and shiver those luffs! "

 "Aye, aye, brother Ramage, " Jackson said cheerfully.

 "Brother Ramage, " Southwick called selfconsciously, "according to my revolutionary quadrant we're exactly a mile off the entrance."

 Ramage nodded. They were approaching the coast at an angle, and there was now no doubt that the wind in the channel was blowing out through the entrance. In another ten minutes they would be in position. He looked aft anxiously, but Wagstaffe was waiting deliberately in the Santa Barbara: he could measure distances as well as Southwick. One mile: they were within range of the guns of both forts, but neither had opened fire.

 "Brother Jackson, " Ramage growled, "there's no need to flog the sails into shreds. If you luff too much again I'll bring you before the committee."

 All the men on the quarterdeck laughed cheerfully and gave their Captain credit for being a waggish fellow, but in fact Ramage could detect a stiffness among them. The habit of discipline, the respect for officers and obedience to orders was hard to drop in a couple of hours, but they were now supposed to be mutineers. There were no officers on board; according to the story that each of them would tell if questioned, all the officers had been murdered two days ago and their new officers were the leaders of the mutiny - brother Ramage (the former bosun), brother Aitken (a Marine sergeant) and brother Southwick (who, Ramage decided, had been the cook's mate, a choice which brought Southwick close to mutiny). The automatic use of the word "brother" might serve to convince a doubting Spaniard; it might gain a few minutes when seconds mattered. Or it might be a complete waste of time. In any case, Ramage had decided, it amused the men; it took their minds off the menace of the forts.

 "Brother Ramage! " a seaman hailed from aloft. "The Santa Barbara's hoisting a signal! "

 Ramage put the telescope to his eye. Number twenty-nine.

 "Brother Aitken, I'll trouble you to heave-to the ship, but not too skilfully please."

 Having spent all his sea-going life in ships that were always handled correctly, Aitken had to concentrate on his orders so that as the Calypso's bow swung across the eye of the wind the foretopsail was not braced up enough to ensure that the pressure on the forward side trying to push the frigate's bow one way was balanced by the pressure on the after sails trying to thrust the bow the other. Instead of lying stopped in the water like a waiting seagull, the bow continued to swing.

 "Brother Aitken! " Ramage said, surprised how easily he could substitute "brother" for the more usual "mister", "if we wear right round now and try again I think we'd demonstrate to our new Spanish friends on shore that we are lubbers! "

 "Aye, aye, sir - brother, rather."

 The Calypso's bow paid right off, spinning the ship round like a top. Sails flapped and slatted like enormous curtains, then filled with a bang; men hauled on sheets and braces, Jackson gave quick, sharp commands to the men at the wheel. The Santa Barbara, taken by surprise, had to bear away to avoid risk of collision and then tack to get up to windward of the frigate.

 Soon the Calypso was lying hove-to, with the Santa Barbara hove-to a hundred yards to windward. Ramage could see the corpulent cook's mate over on the brig, resplendent in the gold-trimmed uniform of a Spanish captain, climbing down into the brig's boat, which had been towing astern and was now hauled alongside. With him was a seaman rigged out in a lieutenant's uniform. Now the boat was cast off and the seamen began rowing down to the Calypso.

 Army officers would be watching with telescopes from the walls of the forts. Ramage hoped it would all be clear to them by now. Somewhere along the coast the Santa Barbara, one of His Most Catholic Majesty's ships, would have found the Calypso flying the "bloody flag" of mutiny and with her mutineers anxious to follow in the footsteps of the Jocasta. Captain Lopez would have ordered her to make for Santa Cruz after having put people on board to keep an eye on things.