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Updated: June 8, 2025
The men refused information at first, but, upon being told that they would be kept upon half-rations until they chose to speak, they said that they had expected to meet the corvette almost midway between the Falkland Islands and Cape Virzins, at the eastern mouth of the Straits; also that both captains had mistaken the Angamos for the Union when they first sighted her.
The Angamos had, by about midnight on the next night, traversed close upon half the distance to the Islands, and Jim was almost beginning to despair of ever catching the elusive corvette, when a hail came down from one of the men who were still stationed at the masthead: "Light ahead! bearing about a point on our port bow!" Douglas's heart jumped.
A few minutes later Jim turned the Angamos eight points to port, bringing her back to her old course, but at a distance of about four miles from the supposed gun-runners. He held on in this direction until he was well astern of them, and then circled right round and headed straight after them, immediately in their wake, at full speed.
But it was of no use. The gun-runners only gained a very few minutes' grace. The Angamos was much too fast a ship for them; and a few minutes later she ranged up on the starboard side of the sternmost steamer, while Jim, seizing a speaking-trumpet, hailed at the top of his voice: "What ship is that? Heave-to! I wish to speak to you!"
But still there was no sign of the Union, and a week after leaving Valparaiso the Angamos dropped her anchor off Punta Arenas, and Jim went ashore to interview the governor of that port, in the forlorn hope that he might have seen the Peruvian pass, or have heard something of her whereabouts. Then Douglas received a surprise which he little expected.
Appalled by the suddenness and extent of the disaster, both the Miraflores and the Angamos ceased firing for several minutes; and, by the light of the fires which were still burning on board both vessels, Jim could see the gun-runner's crew dashing wildly about, as though in the last extremity of terror, while the ship herself was almost shrouded from view by the dense clouds of steam, coloured ruddy yellow in the light of the braziers, which still gushed in volumes from her pierced boilers.
In a voice hoarse with anger at the useless slaughter of five of his men, he gave the order to fire; and immediately the guns of the Angamos began to speak.
He then went back to the bridge, and, as soon as every light on board had been extinguished, ordered the quartermaster at the wheel to turn the ship's head eight points to starboard; thus, a few minutes later, the Angamos was running at full speed, on a course at right angles to her previous one, and was leaving the gun-runners on her port quarter.
They are hull-down; but there are two columns of smoke approaching at a great speed from the south-east. They are about twelve miles away and, so far as I can make out, are just abreast of Point Angamos." Jim did not wait to hear the reply of "Very good.
The Peruvian skipper, however, was quicker in getting his wreckage cleared away than Jim had anticipated, and the Angamos had not fired many rounds before the cumbersome spar was cut adrift and went floating astern, and Villavicencio got his guns to work again.
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