Governor Ramage R. N. (23 page)

If the contractors had to sell their wares in the market-place, he thought bitterly, they'd starve. As it is they wax fat, presumably quietly paying the percentages required to ensure Navy Board officials look the other way, and attend banquets where they drink bumpers to the damnation of the French. In the meantime ship after ship, week after week, recorded in the log such entries as “Opened cask of beef marked 151 pieces, contained 147.”

Now the spare tiller had been shipped on top of the rudder head, steering was a good deal easier. Certainly the long tiller sweeping across the after deck cut down the space the commanding officer had to walk, but he wasn't so sure whether, for a vessel of this size, the tiller wasn't really better than the wheel anyway.

The Italian seaman, Rossi, was taking a spell at the tiller with the coloured man, Maxton.

“No luff to watch,” Ramage said.

“Does make no difference, sir,” Rossi said.

“How so?”

“Habit, sir. All the time I keep looking here or here”—he pointed to where the luff of the mainsail would be on either tack with the wind close hauled—”just as though the masts they still stand.”

“No big t'ing, sir,” Maxton said as if apologizing for Rossi's grumbling, and Ramage smiled to himself: it was a favourite West Indian expression. “But,” Maxton confessed, “I keep forgetting and frightening myself when I see the masts are gone.”

“You'll get used to it,” Ramage said dryly.

“Do we …” Rossi stopped, embarrassed that he'd begun to ask a question, but continued after Ramage nodded. “Are we making for that island, sir?”

“No. We pass as close as we can. It has no harbours or bays we can use. We want another one north of it. Thirty miles beyond.”

By nightfall St Croix was several miles to the east of them and with the night glass Ramage could just make out the high land behind Frederiksted, at the western end of the island. During the late afternoon they'd found the current sweeping athwart their course not only pushing them inexorably to the westward but increasing in strength the closer they got to St Croix. It was presumably the sea pouring into the Caribbean from the Atlantic through the Anegada Passage—there was a reference to it in the sailing directions. And it meant their progress was crabwise; a diagonal resulting from the south wind pushing them north and the current pushing them west.

Ramage was woken at four o'clock next morning: a wind change, the quartermaster reported. As he struggled into his clothes he reflected that any change could only be for the worse: the best wind for them was the one they'd had, from the south.

The deck was a vast and empty expanse in the darkness with a small group of men aft, by the tiller, and three or four men—the lookouts—up forward.

“It's backing, sir,” Southwick said gloomily. “Dropped a bit and backed to south-east-by-south. The way it did it, I reckon it'll go round more.”

Ramage pictured the chart in his mind. By now, the northwestern corner of St Croix should be on the starboard quarter, St Thomas dead ahead, and the small island of Vieques, with Puerto Rico massive behind it, on the larboard beam.

Between St Thomas and Vieques, away to the north-west, was an island marked on the chart as “Snake or Passage Island,” one end of a long line of coral cays reaching westward to Puerto Rico. But from St Thomas to Puerto Rico the sea was a mass of reefs, islands and rocks. In daylight, properly rigged, it was no great problem; at night a safe passage through there would be virtually impossible, whether one had masts or not …

If the wind went any more to the east they'd have no choice anyway. Without the means of steering, apart from making slight changes either side of the direction that the wind carried them, if they had to go through that passage they were done for. Avoiding the long and often unexpected reefs—for the charts were rudimentary—would mean tacking or wearing round, and probably beating to windward, and these were manoeuvres which were part of the past for both the
Triton
and the
Topaz.

“We can only do our best,” Ramage said to Southwick. “Same as before—keep up to the east as best you can.”

He looked astern for the
Topaz.
That was one of the advantages of the Tropics—unless there was rain, it was very rarely completely dark. Almost always there was enough light to give a hint of land, or some other ship, at a useful distance.

The
Topaz
was on the same bearing and finding the same wind shift. So be it. Since he could do nothing about it, whether the wind backed, veered or went flat, he was going to get some sleep; he had been reminded of the dangers of the lack of it a few days ago.

He was woken again shortly before dawn when the ship's company went to quarters, and found it oddly comforting that he had not given the order to get rid of the guns after the ship broached: the
Triton
might not have masts, but no privateer would come alongside with impunity.

As daylight rolled back the horizons, Ramage was relieved to see that they had managed to stay up enough to the east to have St Thomas ahead, but frightened by the bewildering number of islands almost all round them, all with outlying coral reefs and shoals of rocks.

“Hopeless trying to identify them,” he said to Southwick. “We need to spread out the chart and then mark ‘em off!”

He sent Jackson down to the cabin to fetch it and stared at St Thomas again with the telescope.

“Like Tuscany,” Ramage commented to Southwick, gesturing towards St Thomas.

“Dull,” Southwick said. “Not a patch on Grenada.”

Grenada and Martinique were Southwick's favourite Caribbean islands. He hated St Lucia because it was a wet island with an oppressive, sullen atmosphere and Antigua because it was arid and mosquito-ridden. On balance, Ramage agreed with his assessment.

Jackson arrived with the chart and at a gesture from Ramage spread it out on the deck, holding it down to prevent it rolling up again.

“Right,” Ramage said. “St Thomas is dead ahead,” jabbing a finger down on the chart. “Hmm—Puerto Rico looks a big lump!”

Over on the larboard beam they could see a large cone-shaped mountain which was the centre of a range at the east end of the island.

Ramage traced it on the chart. “Ah yes—
El Yunque,
‘The Anvil.' It looks tall enough!”

Southwick pointed to a nearer island almost in line with it. “Is that Vieques?”

“Yes, long on the chart, but looks deceptively short from this angle,” Ramage said.

He slowly turned to the right. “That'll be Snake Island with all these little islands and cays round it—north of Vieques. You can just see it. Now look at the chart—see all these reefs—how they stretch on to Puerto Rico in a long line?”

Southwick measured, using two fingers as dividers. “Why, there's fifteen miles of them! The Cordilleras Reefs. And look at the rocks at the end. What does
‘Las Cucarachas'
mean?”

“The cockroaches.”

“Damned odd name.” He looked round the horizon. “Ah, that's Sail Rock!” He pointed to a curiously shaped island sticking starkly up from the sea and, white in the sunlight, looking in the distance like a ship under sail.

Ramage took the slate and said brusquely: “Let's have some bearings noted down, please.”

“Sorry, sir,” Southwick said. “I got carried away!”

Even if the wind did not back any more, Ramage thought they would not reach St Thomas because of this west-going current sweeping towards the reefs round Snake Island. Maybe they'd only miss St Thomas by a mere couple of miles and take their chance among Savana Island, Kalkfin Cay, Dutchcap Cay, Cockroach Cay and Cricket Cay.

The upper edge of the sun's disc was just poking over the eastern horizon when his steward came up to announce that breakfast was ready. Jackson rolled up the chart and Ramage took it below.

They had left Barbados only a few days ago, though it seemed like weeks, and he still had fresh eggs to eat. The milk had lasted only twelve hours or so out of Carlisle Bay—something about the motion of a ship curdled the milk even faster than it curdled in a house on shore. His steward still had not got used to having a captain who demanded fresh fruit for breakfast when it was available, but although he did not approve, he served it. The other great advantage of being in the Caribbean was that the coffee was really coffee, not breadcrumbs roasted and boiled to make mud-coloured water.

As he cracked the shell of the first egg, Ramage had the curious feeling that he was being rushed like a twig in a flooded mountain stream, with events controlling him. He tried to think of the options open to him at this minute, but no more ideas came. The fact was that the
Triton
and
Topaz
were two ships without masts, and without masts they could move only in the direction the wind drove them. There was no point in trying to think of landfalls until he knew what wind and current were going to do. To plan was simply an exercise in futility and was spoiling his breakfast.

By nine o'clock in the morning, as the sun's warmth began to be felt, Southwick watched the seamen reeling in the log line and stowing the minute glass. He noted the
Triton
's speed on the slate and turned to Ramage, shaking his head.

“It won't serve, sir.”

“You're a late convert! I've already cancelled my rooms at whichever is the best hotel these Danskers have to offer.”

“I was hoping we'd pick up an eddy current. We're only ten miles from St Thomas now.”

Ever since dawn the west-going current had made the whole island appear to be sliding to the eastward, while the islands to the west—Vieques, Snake Island and, beyond them Puerto Rico—were creeping up on the larboard side from the westward, even though the
Triton
and
Topaz
were still steering directly for St Thomas.

It was hopeless trying to conceal from the ship's company that it was anyone's guess where the
Triton
would be cast ashore. Southwick had unrolled and folded his chart. Now, using the top of the capstan as a table, he was inspecting it.

“Could you spare a moment, sir?”

Ramage walked over, and Southwick, without saying anything, ran his finger in a gentle curve from where he had pencilled in the
Triton
's present position, up to the north-west between St Thomas and Snake Island on out into the vast Atlantic. Ramage traced a sharper curve, landing them among reefs near to Snake Island.

“Can't be helped,” he said briefly, knowing that any of the ship's company who overheard him would be none the wiser.

“But …” Southwick began helplessly.

Ramage pointed to the three or four soundings which showed depths of twenty and thirty fathoms.

“Around one hundred and fifty feet is too deep for good fishing,” he said cryptically.

“Depressing, sir, I'd like some fresh fish.”

He unfolded the chart and rolled it up, as if finally resigning himself to the impossibility of anchoring.

“N
OT hard to see why it got its name!” Southwick said sourly, gesturing at the island. It did look like a snake lying coiled up, its head the top of the small, rounded mountain which seemed to be the centre of the island. But a look at the chart showed the real reason for the name: the island was shaped like a snake's head seen sideways and facing eastward with its mouth wide open. The mouth made a huge, almost enclosed bay, with the settlement of San Ildefonso on the east side of it and not even in sight of the open sea.

The island bore west now, and the
Triton,
followed by the
Topaz,
had just sailed and drifted a mile off Sail Rock and could make no better than west. The current was running north-west; the wind had continued backing and was trying to drive the ships south-west. The result was a compromise; a crabwise course of west.

“Should be able to separate the other islands and cays soon and identify ‘em,” Southwick commented. “In fact that headland over there on the north side—reckon that's Isla Culebrita.”

“Probably,” Ramage said, adding wryly, “but the fact is, for once we're not really concerned! We just need to know where we are once our keel touches.”

“What's
‘Culebra'
mean, sir? I see they give it as another name here on the chart.”

“Spanish for ‘snake.' No, ‘serpent' would be more exact.” He looked at the chart and tapped the long shoal running diagonally up to the north-east, between them and the island, and nearly a mile offshore.

“
Arrecife Culebrita
… that's where we'll end up, Mr Southwick. You can take bets for positions from here”—he jabbed a finger on the southern end—”to here, by Culebrita. Three miles of splendid reef. Pity it's all underwater; otherwise we could have marched the Marines up and down it each day, and the ship's company on Sundays!”

“I don't trust this chart,” Southwick said sourly. “It's a benighted mixture, a bit o' Spanish, a bit o' French, an' a ground tier of English. Between ‘em they're bound to have missed a lot of isolated rocks—the sort that sink innocent ships.”

“Well, tell the men; it'll get the job done all the faster!” Ramage gestured forward where most of the Tritons were working hard with ropes, battens of wood, hammers and nails, making a raft from a dozen casks which had been brought up from below after being emptied of fresh water.

More men, working separately, were making a much smaller raft, where each alternate barrel was full of salt meat or fresh water. Yet a third raft, smaller still, was being made up of casks in some of which had been packed carefully wrapped muskets, powder, shot, cutlasses, tomahawks and a collection of tools supplied by the carpenter's mate.

“At least we're learning something about making rafts,” Ramage said.