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The remnant of their spoiled stores Matt Peasley, like a true Yankee, sawed off to good advantage on a trustful citizen of Antofagasta, and credited the ship with the proceeds; after which he got his nitrate aboard and squared away for the Hawaiian Islands. The run to Makaweli was very slow, for the ship was logy with the grass and barnacles on her bottom.
Although war had not as yet actually been declared against Peru, the Chilian Government had very strong reason to suspect the existence of a secret treaty between that country and Bolivia; and as Peru was the possessor of a navy of considerable strength it behoved Admiral Williams to be exceedingly careful that he did not run into any ambush of Peruvian ships; a very sharp look-out was therefore kept incessantly during the six days which the fleet took to steam from Valparaiso to Antofagasta.
Of course, the people who do the work in these deserts or in the little ports along the shore have a hard life. No green lawns or trees adorn their villages. The dust is irritable and the people are a hard-looking class. In one of these towns which I saw, Antofagasta by name, the water the people use is brought nearly two hundred miles.
He also questioned the lads closely, in order to ascertain whether they had heard or seen anything which would furnish a clue to the nationality of the occupants of the launches, but they could tell him nothing; and the Admiral was at length driven to the conclusion that his assailants must have come down the coast from Antofagasta, and must have consisted of a couple of the ancient torpedo-launches which the Bolivians were known to possess, but which Williams had left out of his calculations as being too unimportant to be taken into consideration.
For myself, I feel convinced that the Incas really have some means, unknown to us, of foretelling future events; for I once visited in my youth an old woman in this very town of Antofagasta, who prophesied many things about my future, many of which have, so far, come true, and the rest of which will doubtless happen in due time."
"Where is the Narcissus, by the way?" "Loading nitrate at Tocopilla and Antofagasta, Chile. This is her last voyage under the old charter." "Got any new business in sight for her?" "I won't have the slightest difficulty getting another nitrate charter and at a rate double what she's been getting."
The Admiral was ashore until about three o'clock in the afternoon; and when he returned to the Blanco Encalada it soon became known that the Bolivians had refused to relinquish their demands, and that therefore Antofagasta was to be invested.
The great liners flashing along their policed and humdrum lanes, have long since abandoned London, but every turn of the tide brings up her fleet of cargo ships, straggling, weather-worn and grey, trudging in from ports far-flung and incredible Surinam, Punta Arenas, Antofagasta, Port Banana, Tang-chow, Noumea, Sarawak.
I pieced these out with answers to my questions, for often Steve's English was more puzzling than pre-Chaucer poetry. The El Dorado was a five-masted schooner, twelve years old, and left Astoria, Oregon, for Antofagasta, Chile, on a Friday, more than seven months before, with a crew of eleven all told: the captain, two mates, a Japanese cook, and seven men before the mast.
Murphy replied. "She's a Blue Star craft and bound for Antofagasta also. Her skipper's Salvation Pete Hansen, and it would be just like that squarehead to dodge a deckload of piling and leave it for us." "Well, whatever it was it amused him greatly. It must be worse than a deckload of piling." "There's nothing worse in the timber line, unless it's a load underdeck, sir.
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