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"Yes, sir: three were identical."
"What happened to the fourth?"
"I don't know, sir." There was no fooling the Master; he had sharper eyes than Uncle Nicholas.
"So now you take the angle and the height and you look it up in the tables, eh?" "Yes, sir."
"What was the height of San Juan?"
Accidente! Paolo felt someone had put the evil eye on him this morning. Was it 3200 or 2300? Better too high than too low - or was it? He tried to picture which would give the furthest distance, but mathematics were a confusing subject which he learned by rote.
"3200 feet, sir."
"Good, it's not often you remember a figure correctly, " Southwick grumbled. "Now, off with you and work it out."
Paolo hurried below, carefully wiped the quadrant with the oily rag kept in the box for the purpose - spray and even the damp salt air soon corroded the brass - and put it away. A pencil, a piece of paper and the tables ... He turned to the back of the tables, where he had long ago written notes. "Distance off by vertical angle" - and there was the formula. Hurriedly he worked out the sum and there was the answer. Two miles. But it couldn't be! He did the sum again - just over seven miles. He did the sum a third time and the answer was still seven, and he scurried up the ladder to report to the Master.
But Mr Southwick seemed far from pleased with the news; Paolo saw that the bushy grey eyebrows were pulled down over his eyes like the portcullis of the castle at Volterra.
"Just over seven miles, Mr Orsini? When was that?"
"Well, sir, when I took the angle."
"And have you any idea how long ago that was?" Southwick tapped his watch. "A quarter of an hour ago, Mr Orsini; fifteen whole minutes."
"Yes, sir, " said Paolo nervously.
"And we are making nearly ten knots, Mr Orsini, " Southwick said relentlessly. "Will you favour me by telling me how far the ship has travelled in fifteen minutes?"
Paolo's mind went blank, then he groped in his memory. One knot was one mile in an hour, which was a quarter of a mile in a quarter of an hour. So ten knots was - what?
"Two miles, sir?" he said hopefully, but the Master's furious expression made him think again. A quarter of a mile at one knot. So at ten knots - why, ten quarters! So simple! "One and a half miles, sir! "
"Mr Orsini, " Southwick said firmly, "I've no doubt that you have already calculated how far the ship travels in a quarter of an hour if she is making one knot."
"Yes, sir. A quarter of a mile."
"So if you multiply a quarter by ten, you get one and a half?"
"No, sir, " Paolo admitted ruefully, "two and a half."
"Thank you, " Southwick said sarcastically. "Just bear in mind that an error of a mile in waters like these is more than enough to see the ship hit a shoal."
"Yes, sir. It won't happen again."
"It will, Mr Orsini, it will, " Southwick said sadly. "You can knot and splice with the best o' them, but your mathematics. . ."
Just like Mr Ramage, Southwick reflected. The Captain was a fine seaman; he could handle a ship with less effort than a skilled horseman could ride a quiet nag through a gateway, but tell him that A over B equals C and ask him how to calculate what A was and his eyes went glazed. Still, one had to be fair: Southwick knew his mathematics but Bowen nearly always beat him at chess; and the surgeon could cut off a man's leg and sew it all up, but he couldn't hold a candle to the Captain when it came to guessing how the enemy would react in a given situation. And neither Aitken nor Wagstaffe, competent enough officers though they were, could spot trouble under a distant cloud like the Captain and have the ship snugly reefed down by the time a wicked squall came out of nowhere.
"The wake looks like a snake with colic, " he growled at the quartermaster. "Don't let them use so much wheel."
The big island was approaching fast now, and with the sun lifting higher he did not like the haze that was begi
He looked at his watch: it wanted a few minutes to eight. Aitken would be on deck shortly to relieve him, so he picked up the slate and brought the details up to date.
Course, speed, distance run ... Damnation, he was tired.
The Pearl Island. It sounded romantic enough, but he would be glad when it dropped over the horizon astern and the Saddle of Caracas came in sight. That was the one thing that made a landfall at La Guaira an easy task: the high ridge joining three peaks, the Silla de Caracas, stuck out like humps on camels, with one of them only three miles from La Guaira itself. What a ride those messengers must be having, galloping westwards to tell the Captain-General in Caracas that the English heretics had just stolen La Perla from Santa Cruz. Southwick gri
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At daybreak the following morning the Jocasta was within fifteen miles of La Guaira, ru
Ramage looked down at the chart spread on the bi
La Guaira - he knew precious little about it. An open anchorage with deep water close to the shore, the port built on a narrow plain between two masses of rock . . . That could be almost anywhere. It was defended by the Trinchera Bastion on the eastern side and by El Vigia, a castle overlooking the port from a height of about four hundred feet. According to Southwick the anchorage was occasionally swept by enormous rollers from the north, coming two or three at a time; walls of water sometimes two miles long which wrenched ships from their anchors and tossed them up on the beach like driftwood.