Chapter Three.
The Occupation of Antofagasta.
The month of February in the latitude of Valparaiso corresponds approximately to the month of August in the northern hemisphere, and it was a beautiful, sunny, and very hot morning when, on the 7th of that month, the Chilian fleet, consisting of the Blanco Encalada flagship, the Almirante Cochrane battleship, the corvettes O’Higgins and Chacabuco, with the sloop Esmeralda, steamed out of harbour, on its way to Antofagasta, the principal seaport of Bolivia.
It may not be amiss to state here briefly the causes of the war that was then impending between the allied republics of Bolivia and Peru and the republic of Chili.
The desert of Atacama, on the borders of Chili and Bolivia, had been for many years without an acknowledged owner. Chili claimed it, so also did Bolivia; but it was not considered by either claimant to be of much importance, and it was certainly not regarded as worth fighting for, until it was discovered that it was rich in nitrates and other mineral wealth. In 1866 the two republics, being allied in war against Spain, fixed by treaty the 24th parallel of south latitude as the future boundary between them; and Bolivia agreed that Chilian citizens who were already landowners in the region between 23° and 24° south should be allowed to mine and to export the produce without tax or other hindrance. To facilitate this arrangement, Chili was permitted to maintain a representative in the Custom House at Antofagasta. The nitrate business of those days was chiefly in the hands of a Company, the heads of which were the British house of Gibbs, a Chilian named Edwards, and the Chilian Government. On February 23, 1878, Bolivia saw fit to impose a tax of 10 centavos (4½ pence) per quintal (152 pounds) on all nitrates. Chili remonstrated; but Bolivia insisted, and declared, in addition, that the tax was meant to be retrospective, and that unless all dues were paid before February 14, 1879, the nitrates in the hands of the exporters would be seized and sold by auction. As the day which had been fixed for the seizure drew near, a Chilian squadron, under Rear-Admiral Rebolledo Williams, was got ready for the purpose of seizing Antofagasta itself. It was this fleet which, on the morning of February 7, 1879, steamed out from Valparaiso, with Jim and Terry, as Chilian officers, on board the Blanco Encalada, the flagship of the squadron.
As the fleet weighed anchor and stood out to sea the bells pealed from every steeple in the town, while the guns in the hastily improvised fortifications above the town thundered out a farewell salute to the ships which were going to vindicate the honour of Chili, and the action of which was tantamount to a declaration of war. As each warship rounded the point she returned the salute with all her starboard broadside guns, while the ensigns at the mizzen-gaff were dipped thrice in jubilant farewell.
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. There was no Bolivian navy, if we except a few steam-launches and old spar-torpedo-boats; there was nothing, therefore, to fear in that direction; but, as the Chilians had not as yet had time to advance their forces overland up the coast, a contingent of five hundred regulars was put on board the ships to effect the occupation of Antofagasta; two hundred and fifty being put on board at Valparaiso, while Admiral Williams had been instructed to call in at Caldera Bay, in order to embark the remainder.
Steaming at the rate of the slowest ship in his squadron—the sloop Esmeralda, which was incapable of a speed of more than four or five knots—the Admiral arrived in Caldera Bay on the evening of the 9th of February; and as it was too late to think of embarking the troops that night, he anchored his ships, in column of line ahead, at a distance of about half a mile from the shore, and on a course which stretched across the bay from the signal station to the little village of Calderillo.
Nothing had thus far been seen of the Peruvian squadron, and as Bolivia had, as stated above, no navy worthy of the name, and the fleet was, moreover, still in Chilian waters, Admiral Williams did not consider it necessary to establish a patrol of picket-boats on watch round the ships, as he certainly would have done had he been lying before a hostile port. It was this oversight, coupled with the fact that Williams regarded the Bolivian sea strength as beneath his notice, that very nearly led to a frightful disaster for the Chilians at the very outset of the war.
On this particular night Douglas was, as it happened, the officer of the watch, and Terry, who was off duty, was sharing the vigil with his friend, walking to and fro upon the Blanco Encalada’s quarter-deck and listening to the sounds which were wafted across the water both from the town of Caldera and from the neighbouring ships, all of which were brilliantly lighted up. There was a sailor’s “sing-song” in progress aboard the corvette Chacabuco, the second ship away from the Blanco Encalada, and both lads listened with amusement to the rollicking sounds which proceeded from that direction. There was no moon, but the sky was spangled with brilliant stars, which shed a faint, silvery lustre over the sea and the distant summits of the Andes, enwrapping everything in a soft luminous haze which could scarcely be dignified with the name of light.
The two lads paced to and fro, eagerly longing for the time when Douglas should be relieved from duty, for both were very tired; but Terry did not feel inclined to leave his friend to continue his watch by himself. As the time passed on, the lights of the squadron disappeared, one by one, until at length the only lights which showed were the riding lights, two of which were suspended on every ship, one at the bow and one at the stern. The sounds on board the ships had died away completely, and it was only occasionally that the shouts of a party of revellers were heard from the shore.
It was shortly after one o’clock in the morning when Terry, who was still keeping his friend company, walked to the ship’s rail and stood there in a listening attitude; then he raised his voice slightly and called Douglas to his side.
“Listen carefully for a moment, old fellow,” he said; “cannot you hear something away out there on our port bow?”
Jim listened, and presently his strained senses caught a faint sound like the throbbing of a tiny engine somewhere away in the darkness.
“Yes,” he whispered, “I certainly can hear something. To me it sounds as though there is a small steam-launch somewhere out there; but I certainly cannot see anything of her. What can a launch possibly be doing out there, at this time of the morning?”
“Well,” replied his chum, “if this were not a Chilian port I should be inclined to suspect something in the nature of a night-attack; but under the circumstances I don’t quite see from what quarter such an attack could come. The Peruvian fleet can hardly have come upon us unawares, for we should surely have seen some sign of them; they would hardly steam without showing any lights at all. Besides, this sound—which is certainly nearing us, by the way—seems to me more like— Hallo! did you see that, Douglas? By Jove, it strikes me that there is something more in this than meets the eye.”
“Yes,” answered Jim, “I distinctly caught sight of a flicker of flame. It appeared to me as though somebody had struck a match for some purpose or other, and had hurriedly extinguished it. I wonder what is happening, away over there. There is certainly something going on that is not quite as it should be, I am convinced.”
During this brief interchange of remarks the noise of the churning little propeller had been drawing nearer; and, after listening intently for a few seconds longer, Douglas whispered hurriedly to his chum, “Slip below quickly, Terry, and bring me up my night-glass; I believe there is something radically wrong about this business.”
In a moment O’Meara was back on deck, bearing the telescope, which Douglas hastily snatched from him and brought to bear on the spot from whence the sound proceeded. He had been glancing through it for only about half a minute when he turned excitedly to Terry and gasped out, “Rouse the ship, man—and quickly, too; there is a launch approaching, and she carries a spar-torpedo; she is making straight for us, and evidently means to torpedo the flagship!”
Like a flash Terry disappeared to rouse the crew, while Douglas continued to watch the approach of the launch, in a perfect agony of apprehension. The little craft was very close indeed now, and, steaming at the rate of some nine knots, she would be alongside the Blanco Encalada in a couple of minutes; and once alongside the battleship, nothing could save the latter from destruction.
But anxiety lent wings to Terry’s feet, and in a few seconds the men made their appearance on deck, in all stages of undress, for they fully appreciated the dangers of the situation and had not waited to clothe themselves. Their officers also had dashed up from below, and hurried words of command flew from one quarter of the ship to another. Admiral Williams himself rushed up from below, upon the alarm being given, and he now instructed the ship’s bugler to sound the alarm, and to sound it with all his strength, while at the same time a blank charge was fired as a warning to the other ships to be on the alert. Immediately afterward a bugle was heard shrilling from the Almirante Cochrane, and this was taken up by every ship in the squadron, for the whole fleet was now thoroughly alarmed and on the alert.
For a few moments a state nearly approaching to panic reigned aboard the flagship; but the men were quickly at their quarters, and every gun in the ship was promptly trained upon the position indicated by Douglas. It was too dark to enable the gunners to aim with precision, but the sound guided them to some extent, and suddenly a perfect volcano of machine-gun fire broke out on board the Blanco Encalada, followed by a hoarse scream of agony from the torpedo-launch. An iron bucket was partly filled with paraffin and this was lighted as a flare, throwing a lurid glare over the sea and disclosing plainly to view a couple of rapidly approaching launches, each of which carried a spar over her bows, from which a torpedo was suspended, the launches heading directly for the Blanco Encalada. But upon the nearest launch the effect of the flagship’s fire was terrible. The helmsman had been cut nearly to pieces by the hail of bullets, and he now hung dead over the tiller of the little steamer, which was consequently yawing wildly about. The remainder of her crew were in the well abaft the boiler, some lying huddled up on the floor, while others hung loosely, like half-empty sacks, over the launch’s bulwarks, their arms trailing in the water. Indeed it appeared as though the Blanco Encalada, by a lucky fluke, had concentrated her whole fire upon that one devoted craft. For a moment it appeared as though the little steamer, with her crew of dead, would still effect her purpose, for the torpedo was still intact at the end of its spar, and the launch was heading straight for the battleship; but just at the last moment the corpse of the helmsman was jerked from the tiller by the motion of the sea, and the launch’s head immediately fell off a point or two. She rushed past the Blanco Encalada’s bows, missing them by no more than a few feet, and a few minutes later a deafening report from the shore told those on board the flagship that the torpedo-launch had rushed at full speed upon the rocks, thus exploding her torpedo and blowing herself to pieces.
The second launch, which had been steaming about a hundred yards astern of her consort, had miraculously escaped that whirlwind of shot, and now, seeing the fate of her consort, she described a wide circle, and headed away to the north-west, out of the bay, at full speed. In a few minutes she would be beyond the circle of light thrown by the flagship’s brazier of fire, and would be in safety; but she was not to escape so easily. The Blanco Encalada’s gunners carefully laid their machine-guns on the craft, and opened a furious fire upon her. The rattle of the Nordenfeldts sounded like a continuous roar of thunder, and the stream of fire from their muzzles itself illuminated the darkness of the night with a fitful glare.
The gunners got the range almost immediately, and those on board the flagship could see that the water was lashed into foam round the launch by the pelting rain of missiles. There was no escape from that iron hail, not even for those desperate members of the crew who dived overboard, for the men of the Blanco made a target of every face that appeared upon the surface of the water.
Then the end came, suddenly and dreadfully. A bullet must have passed in advance of the launch and struck the torpedo itself, for the onlookers saw a dazzling burst of whitish-blue flame, which was followed by a deafening, stunning explosion, and the launch seemed to disappear, as if by magic, in a tornado of flame, for not even a fragment of her appeared on the water afterwards. The roar of the machine-guns at once ceased, and every man on board the ship wiped away the cold sweat of fear which had burst out on his forehead at the prospect of being torpedoed; for there is no arm in the naval service so dreaded by the sailor.
Tranquillity was now gradually restored, and half an hour later peace once more reigned; but not a single man in the whole squadron could bring himself to go below again until day dawned. On every ship huge fires were lighted, and boats were sent to patrol the fleet in order to prevent a repetition of the occurrence; but it was not until daylight revealed a sea empty of craft save those of the Chilians that the fearful strain of suspense was relaxed.
Admiral Williams personally thanked Douglas and O’Meara for their quick action, which had undoubtedly saved the flagship, and very probably some of the other vessels of the squadron. 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. How dearly this oversight might have cost him has already been seen.
The following, or rather, the same morning, the ships’ boats were lowered, and, assisted by flat-bottomed craft from the shore, began the work of embarking the remainder of the troops. It continued during the whole morning, and by mid-day the balance of the military contingent was distributed among the ships, which then got up their anchors and turned their bows to the northward once more, still under easy steam for the benefit of the old and rotten Esmeralda, two of whose boilers were so eaten away by rust as to be useless. A particularly keen look-out for hostile ships was kept, in view of the alarming incident in Caldera Bay, but nothing of a suspicious character was sighted, and on the evening of the 13th of February the fleet anchored before the town of Antofagasta, the principal seaport of Bolivia, lying in a half-circle at a distance of about a mile and a half from the shore.
The obnoxious tax was to come into force on the following day, if Bolivia adhered to her original resolution; and Admiral Williams had orders that, should such prove to be the case, he was to seize the Custom House, invest the town, and in the event of resistance being offered, to bombard it. Chili did not intend to submit tamely to the high-handed action of Bolivia, which constituted a serious and intolerable infraction of treaty.
Immediately the squadron came to an anchor, therefore, every gun was trained upon the town, in readiness for action, should such become necessary; and early on the following morning Admiral Williams had his gig piped away, and, accompanied by his flag-captain, he was pulled ashore to ascertain the intentions of the Bolivian authorities, and to warn all the Chilian inhabitants of the place that it would be bombarded should the President of the Republic not prove amenable to reason, so that they might leave the town, with their belongings, before his ships opened fire.
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. He believed, however, that it would not be necessary to bombard the town, as he thought it was hardly likely that the inhabitants would be so unwise as to offer armed resistance to the landing of the Chilian troops. The soldiers were therefore to be landed at once under cover of the guns of the squadron, while a naval force, composed of men from the Blanco Encalada and the Almirante Cochrane, were at the same time instructed to land at the northern part of the seaport and seize the Custom House.
The Chilian troops, under Colonel Sotomayor, were therefore put into boats belonging to the warships, which were then taken in tow by the small steam craft and conveyed to the wharves at the south end of the town, their landing being unopposed, except for a few stray shots which were fired from the cover of some closed shops, and which a few volleys from the soldiers promptly checked. Then the ships’ boats being once more available, the task of seizing the Custom House was proceeded with; and it was anticipated that here, if anywhere, a determined resistance would be made. A council of captains was called on board the Blanco Encalada, and a plan of campaign resolved upon. It was decided that Captain Latorre, of the Almirante Cochrane, should lead the naval detachment, which was to be drawn from all the ships of the squadron, in proportion to the complement of their crews; and Douglas was the officer selected to take charge of the party from the Blanco Encalada, much to his delight, the selection being probably due to a desire on Admiral Williams’s part to recompense the lad in some measure for the promptitude and coolness which he had displayed in saving the flagship in Caldera Bay.
Jim joyously took leave of his friend Terry—who, as he belonged to the engine-room staff, could not expect to be sent on shore expeditions—adjusted the sword at his side, ran down the side-ladder, and took his seat in the stern-sheets of the steam-launch which, with a whaleboat which it was to tow, carried the detachment of men from the Blanco Encalada. The boats of the other vessels were by this time ready; and, headed by the launch of the Almirante Cochrane, carrying Captain Latorre, the leader of the expedition, the little flotilla swept away from the ships toward the north end of the town, vociferously cheered as they went by the remainder of the squadron.
The distance to the Custom House was about two miles; and by the time that they had covered half of it, it was seen that a considerable amount of activity was being manifested ashore; in fact it looked as though here, at any rate, the Bolivians had fully determined to offer resistance.
Jim remarked on the circumstance to Lieutenant Alcerrerez, who was sitting next to him; and while he was speaking, Captain Latorre hailed the boats to slow up and come alongside, in order to receive further instructions. These were soon given, and were to the effect that the launches of the flagship and of the Almirante Cochrane were to be the leading boats in a formation of double column of line ahead, in which order they were to attack. This matter having been arranged, all went ahead again at full speed, while the men eased the cutlasses in their sheaths and inspected the cartridges in their rifles, in readiness for the anticipated encounter.
Suddenly, when the boats were within a couple of hundred yards of the mole leading down from the Custom House, a blaze of fire leapt from the loopholed walls of the buildings, and bullets flew round the little flotilla in a perfect hailstorm. The Chilian ensign in the stern of Douglas’s launch was literally ripped from its staff, proving that, had the Bolivians but depressed their rifle muzzles a trifle more, every man in the steamer’s well would have been hit by the leaden shower. Lieutenant Alcerrerez, who was sitting next to Douglas, emitted a curious little cough, turned half round, and fell forward over the lad’s knees, while several men in the launch sprang convulsively to their feet, only to drop down again in a limp, motionless heap, or to fall over the low gunwales in the violence of their death-struggles. Jim shuddered as he thought of the fate of poor Lieutenant Alcerrerez, but he pulled himself together and laid the poor shot-pierced body gently down on the boat’s floor grating, thereby saving his own life; for even as he stooped, another shower of rifle-bullets hurtled into the launch, killing several more men, and piercing the boat herself in six places below the water-line, so that she began to take in water at an alarming rate.
Some of the other craft had, however, come off still worse than the Blanco Encalada’s launch; for the casualties were even heavier in the Almirante Cochrane’s boats, while a shot had pierced the boiler of the launch belonging to the O’Higgins, which immediately blew up with disastrous results, killing and wounding nearly the whole of her crew.
The flotilla was by this time, however, within the shelter of the mole; and a minute later the boats rushed alongside at full speed, Jim leaping ashore at the same time as Captain Latorre, who, sword in hand, formed his men quickly up, shouting, “Forward, my children; you have your comrades to avenge!” And away raced the boat’s crew along the pier toward the Custom House, receiving, as they did so, another terrible volley from the defenders. The Chilians’ blood was up, however, and they did not even pause to succour their wounded, but dashed forward, holding their fire in reserve, and with their bayonets fixed.
Before the Bolivians could fire again, the Chilians had reached the building, and were thus protected from the fire of its occupants, as the loopholes were too small to allow of their rifles being depressed to any great extent.
“Bring that bag of powder here!” roared Latorre at the top of his voice as two men came up staggering under its weight. The petard was promptly laid against the door; a train was led close alongside the wall to the corner of the house, round which the seamen also sheltered themselves; a match was put to it; there was a loud report and a stunning concussion, followed by the sound of rending timber; and the landing party dashed forward again, round the angle of the building, and in through the breach formed by the explosion. As they entered the house there was a shout of execration and defiance from the floor above, and the defenders began to swarm down the stairs to repulse their enemies.
But, hampered as they were by lack of room to move freely, they could do nothing. They had foolishly left no force on the ground-floor, but had all gone to the first storey, in order to be the better able to fire on their foes; and this oversight now cost them very dear. The Bolivians got jammed into an inextricable mass, in their efforts to descend the stairs at the same time; and, while thus helpless, they were mercilessly cut down and bayoneted by the infuriated Chilians.
In a few minutes the bloody work was over; the corpses on the stairs were pulled away, and the assailants rushed upstairs to complete their work. But the Bolivians had now no stomach for further fight, and they threw down their arms, crying for mercy. Captain Latorre therefore had them all disarmed and bound securely, after which he went up on to the roof of the building and hauled down the Bolivian flag, hoisting the Chilian ensign in its place. He then signalled to Admiral Williams: “Custom House taken, with loss of nineteen killed and twenty-three wounded.”
Antofagasta was in the hands of the Chilians!