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.
The ship was lying hove-to, with the Calypso five hundred yards away to the east.
"Where's the Santa Barbara?" Ramage asked.
Southwick pointed to the west. "She's well clear of the entrance, sir. I saw her with the nightglass. Towing her boats, so she must have recovered the Marines and Spanish prisoners. She's making up for us, like you told Wagstaffe."
"Prisoners! " Ramage said crossly. "We'll soon have more Spaniards out here than there are in Santa Cruz."
"Don't forget the soldiers, sir."
Ramage gave a short laugh. "No, if we'd arrived twelve hours later we'd be the prisoners."
"I didn't mean that, sir, " Southwick protested, but Ramage felt too drained to do anything more than watch the cliffs. It was hard to believe that less then three hours earlier the Calypso had first approached Santa Cruz to begin a dangerous game of bluff. Certainly it had worked and he had hooked the Jocasta like a fisherman landing a lethargic perch, so he should be cheerful and content. Instead he felt as taut as a flying jib sheet hard on the wind. He had expected to lose half of these men who were now waiting in the shrouds and on the hammock nettings like excited starlings perched in a grove of trees. So, he told himself, he should be cheerful because only a handful had been killed.
The fact was that he was far from being a natural gambler; he had little patience with those pallid fellows crouching over the gaming tables at Buck's, terrified that the turn of a card or the tumble of a dice would ruin them, yet always hoping desperately to win. Obviously all they lived for was the fear of losing and exaltation of winning, but it was sad to think that grown men hazarded their futures on the face of a card or the spots of a dice. A house that had been a family seat for a couple of centuries often changed hands because a dice stopped rolling to show a three instead of a four.
Yet ... yet... he had just done much the same thing, except that no gambler at Buck's or one of those other elegant establishments would play against such odds: no one wagered a guinea to win a guinea, unless he was drunk or desperate, yet he had just risked a frigate, and more than two hundred lives, to win a frigate.
Castillo San Antonio suddenly exploded. A great lightning flash radiating outwards lit the surrounding hills, the entrance channel and the Calypso as though it was day and then equally suddenly plunged everything into a darkness that seemed solid. A moment later a deep rumbling coming through the water made the Jocasta tremble, while a noise like a great clap of thunder skated across the sea, followed by echoes bouncing off the mountains and gradually fading into the distance. Then came the startled mewing of seabirds wheeling in alarm and the sudden chatter of excited men.
Ramage blinked rapidly, dazzled and still hardly able to believe what he had just seen. "The nightglass! " he snapped at Southwick.
The hard, rectangular outline of the castle on top of the cliff was hidden in an enormous wreath of smoke and dust, the top of which swirled snakelike in the moonlight. Gradually it thinned out, blown clear by the wind, and finally Ramage could make out the remains of the castle.
"What can you see, sir?" Southwick asked excitedly.
Ramage realized that every man within earshot was straining to hear his reply, and he spoke loudly: "The centre has gone, right down to the foundations. The western corner is still standing ... yes, the smoke's clearing more: the whole eastern side has collapsed."
"I wonder how much powder there was in the magazine?" Southwick asked incredulously.
"Enough! Ah, there we are, the smoke has cleared completely. Yes, three quarters of the castle - all except the western end - has gone. A lot of the stonework has slid down the hill in an avalanche."
"Rennick needn't have bothered to spike the guns, " Southwick muttered, obviously determined to have the last word on the subject.
Ramage swung the nightglass to find the Santa Barbara and saw that she was still beating up to join the Jocasta. For a moment he had feared she might have been close enough to be damaged by lumps of stone hurled up by the explosion.
A red eye winked at the far end of the channel.
"Santa Fe! " he exclaimed. "They've woken up and started firing down the channel."
"Aye, they probably think the English are coming, " Southwick said contemptuously. "Look! " he added as more red flashes followed, "that first gun woke up the rest of them! "
At that moment El Pilar blew up. Again a blinding flash lit up the hills - showing San Antonio a wrecked shell, the western wall throwing the rest into heavy shadow - followed by a shock through the water and a dull blam-blam, as though the side had fallen away from a mountain.