e _Blanco Encalada's_
launch was hurled off his feet, and thrown either into the bottom of the
boat or overboard, while the little steamer's bows rose bodily out of
the water until her keel reached an angle of almost forty-five degrees,
and there she stuck, still quivering in every timber from the shock.

In a second Jim realised the terrible truth. By some means or other the
Peruvians had got wind of the intended attack, and had placed a stout
boom of timber all round the ship, and it was upon this obstacle that
the Chilian launch had charged at full speed, running right up on to it
with the force of the blow, and remaining there immovable and almost a
wreck.

Jim's first thought was of how to warn the people in the other two
launches, for if the enemy had been prepared for attack in one quarter,
he would certainly have taken the same precautions in the other. Ah,
yes! There were several blue rockets in a locker in the stern-sheets;
these would serve to show that something had gone wrong, and might
perhaps save the others from a similar mishap.

Jim scrambled out of his seat and was just raising the locker lid when a
long streak of flame burst from the _Huascar's_ side. There was a
deafening, thudding roar, and a stream of machine-gun bullets screeched
and hummed over their heads. They had indeed walked right into a
cunningly contrived trap, and the Peruvians had been on the watch for
them the whole time.

The next minute there was a dull roar away to starboard, and Jim saw,
out of the corner of his eye, a huge column of water leap up, with
something dark poised upon the top of it. In a second he realised that
one at least of his consorts had been successful and had torpedoed her
prey; but even before the column of water had subsided, there broke out
a crash of musketry aboard the second monitor, and sparks of fire sprang
up in different parts of her, which quickly brightened into a lurid
glare and showed that her people were lighting beacon-fires, the better
to see who their attackers might be and their whereabouts.

Truly it was the Chilians who had been taken by surprise, not their
enemies! And what a mess they had made of it all, too!

But there was no time now to think about the other launches; they would
have to look after themselves; for Jim's whole energies were now
directed toward the saving of his own boat's crew. After the first
volley of machine-gun fire from the ship which he had attacked, th