The Chucuito party was fortunate, both in arriving early and in being joined by a number of intimate friends, for they were enabled to take possession of one of the large telescopes, and hold it for the morning.
Don Isaac was the first to come, and he listened attentively to the recital by the boys, who told again, for his benefit, of the strange doings at the break of day on the Chucuito beach. They had hardly finished when Señor Cisneros appeared.
“What is this I hear? Are they going to use a torpedo in broad daylight? I fear it will prove certain death for the crew that attempts to approach those ships,” and he pointed seaward.
Captain Saunders explained that the torpedo was not of the kind generally launched from war vessels, or sent from shore, and he briefly described the construction of John Longmore’s engine of death. The Peruvian’s face flushed while he listened to the recital, and his eyebrows contracted.
“This should not be allowed!” he exclaimed. “It is a crime! Pierola should be appealed to and asked to stop this slaughter.”
At these words Mr. Dartmoor looked at Captain Saunders triumphantly. He had been correct in his estimate of the people. First, the officer who had been ordered to oversee the details of launching the lighter had denounced the work to which he had been assigned; and now a representative citizen from the interior deplored the event in even more energetic terms.
It was too late to stop the enactment of the tragedy, too late to appeal to Pierola. The fiendish plot, hatched in the crazed brain of the old whaler, and approved by a hot-headed official in Lima, must go forward. The boat which was laden with market produce had drifted two miles from shore, and was nearing the line where the green water of the harbor merged into the blue beyond; as it passed from one colored surface to the other events began to move rapidly—and all the while, from along the shore, came the buzz of the many thousands who had crowded as near as was possible to the water’s edge.
“Look!” suddenly exclaimed Louis. “A boat is putting off from the mole!”
“It’s the state barge,” said Harvey, after a glance through the marine glasses. “I wonder what’s up now.”
The question was soon answered by the craft itself, which was rowed alongside the Union. Believing it had been sent out only to carry an officer back to his ship, they paid no more attention to this section of the harbor until Carl called attention again to the corvette, by saying that a steam launch had put off from her side. Puffs of smoke came from the short stack on this small vessel, and after swinging under the stern of the Union she shaped a course out toward the open.