The flash of the great gun, fired at such close quarters, nearly blinded the Janequeo’s crew, while they were dazed by the hurtling roar of the shell as it sped past, a few feet only above their heads. But the torpedo-boat was now moving very rapidly, and the Manco’s crew would not be able to load and fire their stern gun again before she was out of its range; but there was still her bow gun to be feared, and the gauntlet of the Union and the two school hulks had to be run before they could get clear. It looked as if the Janequeo was in for a bad ten minutes; for, after the alarm had been given, it seemed as though every ship in the harbour had lighted her beacon-fire; and Jim could see, by the glare of those which had sprung up aboard the Union and her consorts, that guns, both big and small, had been run out ready to fire into the intruder as she passed; while every vessel’s side was literally black with riflemen, all waiting to pour a volley into the daring Janequeo.
Douglas had almost forgotten, in the prevailing excitement, the fact that torpedoes had been attached to three Peruvian vessels, and, in any case, he did not expect them to explode for at least an hour; when, just as the Janequeo had got about fifty yards past the Manco Capac, there was a most appalling explosion from the stern of the latter craft; and Jim, turning round, saw that the air was full of blazing fragments of wreckage, and that, even as he gazed, the great monitor was beginning to settle by the stern. At the moment when the mine exploded, the monitor was just about to fire her 15-inch bow gun; but the catastrophe of course threw everything into confusion, and the weapon, flung from its trunnions in the very act of firing, discharged its deadly missile high into the air, where it exploded, sending out a blaze of flame like a miniature firework display.
“One of them done for, at any rate!” soliloquised Jim through his set teeth, as he bent over the deck-telegraph of the flying boat to ring for yet more speed. “But now they will surely find the other torpedoes and cut them adrift before they have time to explode. Confound those fuses! The wretched things must have perished badly, or perhaps they have been wrongly timed in the manufactory.”
The young man had no opportunity, however, for further reflection, for they were now dashing along toward the Union and the other two ships; and after the first shock of terror at the destruction of the monitor, the Peruvians had returned to the guns, and were quite ready to send the Janequeo to the bottom.
“God help us!” murmured the young Englishman; “we shall never get through that tempest of fire; but I am going to try!”
Nearer and nearer they swept, until the torpedo-boat was only a hundred yards away, and then the Union fired her first gun, a large 8-inch rifled weapon, loaded with a shell which screamed horridly as it swept past and plunged into the water just astern. The riflemen raised their pieces, levelled them over the corvette’s high sides, and, at the word of command, which all aboard the torpedo-boat could hear, they sent their volleys hurtling aboard that devoted craft. Jim felt a sharp twinge in his left shoulder, and knew that he
was hit; two other men fell to the deck, limp as empty suits of clothes. The Janequeo was now abreast the Union, and, as she drew level, the latter ship discharged every gun that she could bring to bear.
It was simply impossible that she could miss. There was a ripping and tearing of iron as the shower of steel struck the torpedo-boat. Both her funnels were blown completely out of her, and the hissing roar of escaping steam, followed by the screams of the scalded stokers down below, told all too plainly that a boiler had been pierced. The quartermaster at the wheel let go the spokes and collapsed on deck, and Jim staggered to the helm just in time to prevent the Janequeo from crashing into the mole. Then, still floating, and with smoke, steam, and flame billowing along her decks and blinding her gallant skipper, the maimed little vessel staggered forward. But escape was not for her. The Union had a smart man for captain, and he did not intend the little Chilian hornet to go clear. The forward 8-inch gun bellowed out, and its shell struck the Chilian fair and square on her stern, exploding as it passed into her hull, and literally blowing the after-part of her away.
Her stern plunged downward; she rolled heavily once or twice, and then turned right over, throwing Jim, in a state of semi-unconsciousness, into the water of the harbour. Then she sank, and the bottom blew out of her as she plunged beneath the surface. At this precise moment, to Jim’s fast-failing senses there came the roar of a terrific explosion, followed almost instantly by a second, and he knew that, though his own ship was lost, he had done his duty and succeeded in destroying three of the enemy.