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Only one or two fortresses in the south were now held for Spain. Five days after the battle of Maipo, San Martin returned once more to Buenos Aires and began organizing an expedition for the liberation of Peru. Puyrredon, now Supreme Director, supported his undertaking. While San Martin was soliciting aid from the Argentine Republic, the Chileans were not idle.
The trouble with the Chileans was that they were afraid of the natives hereabouts, and preferred to wait on the off chance of a ship showing up. At last they saw that Malcolm and I were right, but we missed the full run of the tide, and were some miles from the mainland, or whatever it is, when night fell.
They were not strong enough to grapple with the powerful men-of-war of the Chileans that so saucily watched the port, hence they remained inside under the protection of the guns at the fort and at the point, while great piles of sand bags were erected to the seaward of the docks as a shield against Chilean cannon balls.
That port was then in the hands of the Chileans and the stop was only long enough to take on the mail, when they headed for Callao, the principal port of Peru.
Their numbers so emboldened them that unless frightened away, they would attack the intruders on their territory. From those islands Paul took observations of the movements of the Chileans and came to the conclusion that they were running so short of coal that all of their vessels did not steam out to sea at night; but some of them anchored back of San Lorenzo.
This retreat did not prove, in the battle of Yalu and the combats between the Chileans and Peruvians, a place of safety; but as a rule there is a considerable percentage of protection in its use. Admiral Dewey preferred to remain on the bridge and there were four fragments of Spanish shells that passed close to him, striking within a radius of fifteen feet.
"Sorry," he answered, composing himself to sleep. Courtenay glanced at the chronometer. "I must be off," he announced. "Tollemache may need some help with his bombs, and those Chileans require looking after." Christobal, too, quitted the chart-room to visit his patients.
As there was only a lot of old Russian torpedoes on hand and no dynamite to spare, Paul decided to set dummies, knowing they would have the same effect on the Chileans, who would watch the work through their powerful glasses, from San Lorenzo. He procured a lot of empty kegs and had them painted a bright red.
Both San Martin and O'Higgins had perceived that the only effective way to eliminate the Peruvian wedge was to gain control of its approaches by sea. The Chileans had already won some success in this direction when the fiery and imperious Scotch sailor, Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, appeared on the scene and offered to organize a navy. At length a squadron was put under his command.
We pushed along cautiously, found the entrance to the cove we had made out before the light failed, and were about to lay to until dawn, when we saw a rocket and heard the fog-horn. That woke us up, you bet. The Chileans pulled like mad, but when we came near enough to discover that the ship was being attacked by Indians, I had a fearful job to get my heroes to butt in.
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