e young man took him to be. He
had seen the two Chilians from his mastheads before they had seen him;
and he had been watching them closely ever since; with the result that
he had arrived at the conclusion that some trick was being played on
him. But he fell into the error of mistaking the cruiser for the
_Huemul_, and of believing that the crews of both vessels, corrupted by
Chilian gold, had seized the ships, after murdering their officers.
Villavicencio, therefore, promptly made up his mind to retake the gun-
runners, which he felt certain were no longer in Peruvian hands, since
his signals remained unanswered; and when he had approached to within a
mile and a half of the two Chilian craft, he very much astonished Jim
Douglas by opening fire upon him with his heavy 8-inch bow-guns.

Although he could not account for this sudden commencement of
hostilities on the part of the _Union_, Jim on his own part had only
been waiting for the proper moment to open fire himself, and now he, in
turn, gave Villavicencio a most unpleasant surprise by returning his
fire with a very much larger gun than the Peruvian imagined that the
_Huemul_ carried. For a few seconds the skipper of the _Union_
hesitated as to whether he should not, even now, turn and run; for,
taken altogether, matters seemed to be rather in the nature of an
elaborately-laid trap.

But Villavicencio, now that Admiral Grau was dead, was the bravest man
in the naval service of Peru; and his hesitation was but momentary. He
continued to steam ahead at full speed, but put his helm over to
starboard, causing the corvette to swerve slightly to port, and thus
presented her whole starboard broadside to the approaching Chilians, who
now hauled down the Peruvian flag and hoisted their own ensign. Then,
as soon as his broadside guns bore on the enemy, Villavicencio fired,
and a storm of shot and shell came flying round the _Angamos_ and her
consort, hulling the latter badly, and dismounting two of the recently
replaced 12-pounder breech-loaders.

Jim ground his teeth as he saw the terrible execution wrought by the
_Union's_ broadside; and, exhorting his men to keep cool, ordered them
to load and fire as fast as they could. Once more the cruiser's 8-inch
gun roared out, sending its vengeful messenger shrieking toward the
corvette. The shell struck right at the base of that ship's foremast,
and there exploded, scattering death and destruction all round it. The
huge s