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Their recent disaster, moreover, had not disturbed their aim; for the next 8-inch shell fired by the Union blew away the Miraflores' funnel, and killed her helmsman, with the result that she turned sharply to port, with smoke and flame sweeping along her deck from the cavity which the shell had blown in it, and very narrowly escaped ramming the Angamos.
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.
The signal for recall was hoisted aboard the Blanco Encalada, the firing gradually ceased, the Huascar, Angamos, and Pilcomayo got their anchors, and shortly after nightfall the whole Chilian fleet was once more anchored safely under the lee of San Lorenzo island.
"As you, of course, are aware," continued the admiral, smiling, "we lost sight of the Union corvette before the battle of Angamos, and as we had more important business on hand at the moment, we were not able to pursue her; consequently she got clear away.
The cruiser immediately yawed wildly, and in another minute would have crashed into the gun-runner, probably sending both craft to the bottom, had not Jim seized the wheel, as it spun out of the dead man's fingers, and brought the Angamos back to her course just in the nick of time.
Several of her guns had been badly damaged; but the young man suggested that they could be replaced, together with the damaged weapons belonging to the Angamos, from the gun-runner's cargo, which consisted, in part, of a number of similar pieces.
After ten minutes of furious bombardment, and with the Miraflores crawling slowly up to take part again in the encounter, Villavicencio, brave as he was, realised that he had walked into a trap and had caught a Tartar; for he now recognised the Angamos for what she really was a cruiser.
The Almirante Cochrane did not reply for several minutes, but silent and grim as death itself, she held steadily on her course toward the monitor. Then, when she had approached to within a distance of a little over a mile, she in turn opened fire with both her forward turret-guns on the Huascar, and the battle of Angamos had begun in real earnest.
Directly the Chilians perceived this new move, the Angamos and Pilcomayo stood in to the support of their consort, and in a very few minutes Jim beheld the somewhat rare spectacle of a close fleet action in which the sides were well matched, for the two Peruvian monitors were of about equal strength to the three Chilian warships.
He was also informed that Captain Castello would take charge of the Angamos on the coming expedition, and that Jim himself was, for certain particular reasons, to return to the Blanco Encalada, in his former capacity of first lieutenant of the flagship.
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