ards. There was a hasty
challenge by the startled officer in command, to which the admiral himself
replied by threatening the occupants of the boat with instant death if
they gave the slightest alarm.

The threat, and the appearance of the boats dashing in through the
opening, had its effect. No word was spoken by the Spaniards, and in a few
minutes the flotilla of vessels, rowed down in line upon the frigate, and
boarded her at a dozen points simultaneously. The Chilians had been
ordered not to use their pistols, but to rely wholly on their cutlasses.
The sentries on the frigate shouted the alarm, and the Spaniards,
snatching up their arms, rushed up from below. Many were cut down at once
by the Chilians, the rest retreated to the forecastle and made a gallant
stand, and it was not until the Chilians had made three charges upon them
that they gave way, some leaping overboard, and others running below. The
Spanish marines gathered on the quarter-deck, and they too fought with
great bravery. Not one among them asked for quarter or sought safety in
flight, but continued the struggle until the last man fell.

The admiral himself had been very unfortunate. He had swung himself up
into the main-chains the moment his boat touched the frigate, and was
about to leap upon the deck of the _Esmeralda_ when he was struck on the
head by a Spanish sentry with his clubbed musket and fell back into the
boat. He fell upon one of the rowlocks, which entered his back near the
spine, inflicting a very severe injury, from whose effects he suffered for
several years after. In spite of the agony caused by the wound he again
clambered up on to the deck, and was almost immediately shot through the
thigh. He bound a handkerchief tightly round it, and managed to direct the
operations until the capture was complete. The affair occupied but a
quarter of an hour, the Chilian loss being eleven killed and thirty
wounded, while a hundred and sixty of the Spaniards fell. While this was
going on, the garrison of the forts, awakened by the uproar, ran to their
guns and opened fire on the _Esmeralda_, several of the Spaniards, among
them their captain, and two or three of the Chilians, being killed or
wounded by their shot.

It happened that in the harbour at the time were two neutral frigates--one
British, the other an American. It had been arranged between them and the
Spanish authorities that in the event of a night attack they were to show
lights in