oth the frigates
had been compelled, by want of provisions, to run the risk of halting
at Guayaquil, whither also an envoy from San Martin had arrived,
instructed to tempt the Guayaquilians into friendship with Peru and
jealousy of Chili. On the appearance of the Spanish frigates, he had
persuaded their captains, as the only means of averting the certain
ruin that Lord Cochrane was planning for them, quietly to surrender to
the Peruvian Government. In this way Chili was cheated of its prizes,
although Lord Cochrane's main object, the entire overthrow of the
Spanish war shipping in the Pacific, was accomplished without further
use of powder and shot. The _Prueba_ had been sent to Callao, and the
_Venganza_ was now being refitted at Guayaquil.

Lord Cochrane had now done all that it was possible for him to do in
fulfilment of the naval mission on which he had quitted Chili a year
and a half before. Proceeding southward, he anchored in Callao Roads
from the 25th of April till the 10th of May. San Martin's Government,
fearing punishment for their misdeeds, prepared to defend Callao. Lord
Cochrane, however, wrote to say that he had no intention of making
war upon the Peruvians; that all he asked was adequate payment for
the services rendered to them by his officers and seamen. In the
same letter he denounced the new treachery that had been shown with
reference to the _Venganza_ and the _Prueba_.

The answer to that letter was a visit from San Martin's chief
minister, who begged Lord Cochrane to recall it, and impudently
repeated the old offers of service under the Peruvian Government,
adding that San Martin had written a private letter to the same
effect. "Tell the Protector from me," said Lord Cochrane, "that if,
after the conduct he has pursued, he had sent me a private letter, it
would certainly have been returned unanswered. You may also tell him
that it is not my wish to injure him, that I neither fear him nor hate
him, but that I disapprove of his conduct."

Lord Cochrane's brief stay off Callao sufficed to convince him that,
though the people of Peru were being for the time subjected to a
tyranny almost equal to that practised by Spain, no one was likely to
be long in fear of San Martin, as his treacheries and his vices were
already bringing upon him well-deserved disgrace and punishment. To
that purport Lord Cochrane wrote to O'Higgins on the 2nd of May. "As
the attached and sincere friend of your excellency," he