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Updated: June 25, 2025
Our captain was anxious to get in before her, for it would be a great credit to us, on the coast, to beat the Ayacucho, which had been called the best sailer in the North Pacific, in which she had been known as a trader for six years or more.
We were drawn up on a nearly square tableland known as the Plain of Ayacucho, a league in circumference, and flanked right and left by rugged ravines. We had the village at our backs, and the only road by which we could retreat was effectually blocked. The Royalist army was perched just below the summit of a gigantic ridge called Condorcanqui, which formed the eastern boundary of the plain.
The third section was very much longer and more difficult in every respect than either of the two completed, since it extended from Nanucaca already connected by rail with Cerro de Pasco along the shore of Lake Chinchaycocha to Ayacucho and Cuzco, and thence on to Santa Rosa, the distance being some four hundred and seventy miles as the crow flies, while the difficulties of the route might possibly increase that distance by nearly one-third.
This he did, by gaining a great victory at Ayacucho, which completely dispersed the Royalists, reducing their possessions in Peru to the Castles of Callao, which Rodil, after a little over a year's successful resistance, was compelled to surrender.
Battles had been fought, a large French fleet was in the Pacific, &c., &c.; and one of the boat's crew of the Ayacucho said that, when they left Callao, a large French frigate and the American frigate Brandywine, which were lying there, were going outside to have a battle, and that the English frigate Blonde was to be umpire, and see fair play. Here was important news for us.
At twelve o'clock, the Ayacucho dropped her fore topsail, which was a signal for her sailing. She unmoored and warped down into the bight, from which she got under way. During this operation her crew were a long time heaving at the windlass, and I listened to the musical notes of a Sandwich-Islander named Mahanna, who ``sang out'' for them.
The Loriotte came in just after dark, and let go her anchor, making no attempt to pick up the other until the next day. This affair led to a great dispute as to the sailing of our ship and the Ayacucho.
One would have on a Spanish jacket, part of the spoils of Ayacucho another, an American one, which he had bought from some sailor a third a monk's robe, cut short, and fashioned into a sort of doublet. Here was a shako wanting a brim, in company with a gold-laced velvet coat of the time of Philip V.; there, a hussar jacket and an old-fashioned cocked hat.
This was bad for us, for, being ``flying light, with little more than ballast trim, we were in no condition for showing off on a taut bowline, and had depended upon a fair wind, with which, by the help of our light sails and studding-sails, we meant to have been the first at the anchoring-ground; but the Ayacucho was a good league to windward of us, and was standing in in fine style.
I rode carefully, but my eyes were heavy and my limbs ached with fatigue. Darting suddenly from the throng, a man seized my bridle-rein and cried aloud, "A soldier from Ayacucho! Here is one of our brave deliverers!" Instantly I was surrounded by the crowd, which pressed me so closely that my horse could barely move.
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