gned to him in Arica Bay, and he therefore sent for him to his
cabin and informed the young man that he was to take command, in the
_Blanco Encalada's_ launch, of the flotilla which was to do patrol-duty
during the night--a circumstance which afforded Jim the utmost
satisfaction, and emboldened him to ask as a favour that Terry O'Meara
should again be allowed to accompany him; to which request Riveros
immediately acceded.

Night came on with no sign of the enemy; but as Mejillones was in
Bolivia, and had only very recently been occupied by the Chilians, the
danger was almost as likely to come from the direction of the shore as
from the sea, as the port was full of Bolivian and Peruvian refugees who
would stop at nothing to effect the destruction of part of the Chilian
fleet. As soon as the dusk began to fall, the launches of the two
ironclads were hoisted out, their crews picked, and at half-past six Jim
and his friend Terry took their places in the flagship's boat, which
steamed off slowly in one direction round the harbour, while that of the
_Almirante Cochrane_ started, under easy steam, in the opposite
direction. Both launches were provided with a Gatling gun in the bows,
and their crews were armed with rifles and revolvers, and orders had
been given that any strange craft upon failing to answer a challenge
should be fired into immediately.

It occupied the launches about an hour, running under easy steam, to
circumnavigate Mejillones harbour, and Jim's boat had already made her
round five or six times without any suspicious circumstance occurring,
and he himself was beginning to feel very tired and sleepy, when about a
mile and a half away, at the northern extremity of the bay, he fancied
he saw a spark of light flare up for a moment and then go out suddenly,
as though hastily quenched.

He was broad awake immediately, with every sense on the alert, and he
strained his eyes into the darkness--for there was only a very thin
crescent moon shining--in order to try to make out where the light had
come from and what had caused it.

"Terry," he whispered to his chum, who was sitting drowsily over the
little engines, with the starting lever loosely clutched in his hand,
"did you catch sight of a glimmer of light away there to the northward
just now?"

"Light? No; I saw no light," replied Terry, suddenly pulling himself
together. "Did you? Whereabouts was it, old boy? This continual going
round and round has be