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Updated: May 4, 2025
The Independencia was a slightly faster craft than the Covadonga, but she drew a good deal more water; and Captain Condell, with masterly skill, availed himself of this circumstance to the full, by running across shoals over which the Peruvian ship dared not follow him, and by keeping quite close in to the shore where she could not approach.
It was also within the bounds of possibility that the Pilcomayo and Manco Capac might likewise be there; and in that case, since the opposing forces would be pretty evenly matched, there was every prospect of a general engagement being fought, a prospect which aroused the keenest enthusiasm of every man in the fleet, and more especially that of such young hot-bloods as Jim and his friend O'Meara, to say nothing of Lieutenant Montt, who was being transferred, to his great gratification, from the Covadonga to the Blanco Encalada.
Whether the enemy had yet sighted the Covadonga was still doubtful, for the gunboat was close in under the high cliffs which formed the coastline at that point, and they would hardly be on the look-out for a vessel so near in to the land.
Jim therefore fired a gun in defiance at the Huascar, which immediately took up the pursuit, and the Covadonga steamed away toward Antofagasta, which she reached on the following day, having run the Huascar out of sight; that ship being unable to steam very fast in consequence of an injury to her bow, caused by the ramming of the Esmeralda.
The telegram had also contained a warning that the Peruvian warships Huascar and Union were prowling up and down the coast, and, as each one separately was a good deal more than a match for the little Covadonga, it behoved her captain to keep a very sharp look-out for any sign of the enemy, especially as the gunboat was not fast enough to enable her to rely upon her speed for safety.
When the Covadonga had approached to within about a mile of the Peruvian ironclads, Jim saw the Huascar go about and heave-to, with her bows pointing to the south, while the Union came foaming along on her original course, which was parallel to that of the gunboat, and about half a mile distant from it to seaward. "Aha!" thought he to himself, "so that is the manoeuvre, is it?
Warning of the approach of the Moslem foe was quickly brought to the Spanish leader, who at once left his place of assembly for the cave of Covadonga, a natural fortress in Eastern Asturia, some five miles from Caggas de Onis, which he had selected as a place strikingly adapted to a defensive stand.
He took Porto Bello, laid siege to Cartagena, but was forced to withdraw; then he made an ineffectual attack on Cuba, after which he passed round Cape Horn into the Pacific, caused great consternation in Chile, sacked and burned Payta, captured the galleon Covadonga with a cargo worth $1,500,000, and finally returned to England with a few ships only and less than half his men.
On reaching Antofagasta the Covadonga went into the roads and lay inside the reef which stretches across their entrance; and there, her captain, Carlos Condell, telegraphed to Valparaiso, giving details of the previous day's fight, and asking for further orders, while he set about repairing the very extensive damage which had been sustained by his ship in her fight with the Independencia.
To the Almohades, the Merias coming from Sahara in Algeria, but in dying out each of these dynasties left each time a little more ground under the hands of the Christians, who, since the time in Telage, when they were tracked into the caverns of Covadonga, had not ceased, in spite of ill fortune of all sorts, to follow the work of deliverance.
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