o's_ crew would
not be able to load and fire their stern gun again before she was out of
its range; but there was still her bow gun to be feared, and the
gauntlet of the _Union_ and the two school hulks had to be run before
they could get clear. It looked as if the _Janequeo_ was in for a bad
ten minutes; for, after the alarm had been given, it seemed as though
every ship in the harbour had lighted her beacon-fire; and Jim could
see, by the glare of those which had sprung up aboard the _Union_ and
her consorts, that guns, both big and small, had been run out ready to
fire into the intruder as she passed; while every vessel's side was
literally black with riflemen, all waiting to pour a volley into the
daring _Janequeo_.

Douglas had almost forgotten, in the prevailing excitement, the fact
that torpedoes had been attached to three Peruvian vessels, and, in any
case, he did not expect them to explode for at least an hour; when, just
as the _Janequeo_ had got about fifty yards past the _Manco Capac_,
there was a most appalling explosion from the stern of the latter craft;
and Jim, turning round, saw that the air was full of blazing fragments
of wreckage, and that, even as he gazed, the great monitor was beginning
to settle by the stern. At the moment when the mine exploded, the
monitor was just about to fire her 15-inch bow gun; but the catastrophe
of course threw everything into confusion, and the weapon, flung from
its trunnions in the very act of firing, discharged its deadly missile
high into the air, where it exploded, sending out a blaze of flame like
a miniature firework display.

"One of them done for, at any rate!" soliloquised Jim through his set
teeth, as he bent over the deck-telegraph of the flying boat to ring for
yet more speed. "But now they will surely find the other torpedoes and
cut them adrift before they have time to explode. Confound those fuses!
The wretched things must have perished badly, or perhaps they have been
wrongly timed in the manufactory."

The young man had no opportunity, however, for further reflection, for
they were now dashing along toward the _Union_ and the other two ships;
and after the first shock of terror at the destruction of the monitor,
the Peruvians had returned to the guns, and were quite ready to send the
_Janequeo_ to the bottom.

"God help us!" murmured the young Englishman; "we shall never get
through that tempest of fire; but I am going to try!"

Nearer and n