CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 When Ramage saw the row of lanterns appear on Castillo San Antonio he gave a sigh of relief which brought a laugh from Southwick. "So you were worrying about Rennick, sir! "

 "I was worrying about the job, not the man, " Ramage said impatiently. He glanced astern. "We're still in range of Santa Fe . . ."

 Southwick sniffed yet again. "I still can't see the commandant ordering his gunners to open fire on the Jocasta, or whatever her Spanish name was. On the Calypso, perhaps."

 "They can't tell which is which by now - ah, there are the lights on El Pilar. Both in our hands. I hope those Marines step lively on their way back to the boats."

 Southwick stared up at each fort as the Jocasta passed through a line joining them. "I hope they don't make any mistake with the slow match, " he said. "I wonder how much powder they have in the magazines."

 "Plenty, " Ramage said. "Poor quality but plenty of it."

 "Let's hope there's enough to do the job. That San Antonio must have walls ten feet thick."

 The two men watched as the Jocasta came clear of the two headlands. Ramage brought her round to starboard a couple of points, well up to windward, so that when she was hove-to the current would slowly take her back towards the entrance. The Santa Barbara was still close in with the entrance but the Calypso was now showing up clear of the headlands.

 Ramage looked at his watch. "They should be spiking the guns now."

 "Waste of time, to my way of thinking, " Southwick grumbled. "Double charge and three roundshot: there's no chance of repairs, then."

 "Too risky, " Ramage said, remembering that Rennick had made the same argument. "Sixty-four guns altogether. Someone's bound to get excited and fire one gun too soon. And why rouse out the town and Santa Fe before we have to?"

 Southwick shrugged his shoulders. The fact was that he agreed, but he was annoyed that his role in the night's activities had been slight. True, he had boarded the Jocasta, but he had expected to be given the job of taking Castillo San Antonio, and he was enjoying his grumbles.

 "Take the conn, Mr Southwick, " Ramage said. "Heave-to the ship now, and make sure the Calypso heaves-to reasonably close. 1 want to go through some of those Spanish papers in my cabin."

 The Spanish captain of the Jocasta, he discovered as he began reading through the papers, was Diego Velasquez, and the way the letters were kept in neat bundles tied with different coloured tapes showed that he was a careful and precise man. Red tape denoted letters and orders from the Captain-General of the province of Caracas (the bulk was due more to the thick wax seals than the amount of paper), while blue tape secured correspondence with the Mayor and junta of Santa Cruz.

 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.