After nightfall, the blue glow rising from these awful funeral pyres, lit up the whole field. Bands of Chinamen leading mules who carried panniers containing vessels of kerosene, passed around, and whenever they saw a corpse not burning, they struck a hole in it with a spade, poured in the oil and fired. At other points on the road, lay heaps of mangled dead, while the earth around was torn up in most unaccountable manner. This was caused by ground torpedoes placed in the road by some fertile genius, who thought that he could thus destroy the advancing Chileans.
After two or three of those hidden mines had exploded with dreadful effect on the Chilean soldiers, they compelled the Peruvian prisoners to march ahead, and when these were destroyed they set a drove or cattle ahead in self-defense. Chorrilos, where Paul's headquarters had been so long, lay a mass of ruins. Bodies in every fallen house gave forth the awful stench of human decay.
Paul stood on the cliffs overlooking the pleasant bay, in whose waters his little sloop had been anchored so many times, and beheld the result of a charge of the Chilean army. Bodies of the dead soldiers lay thick under the foot of the cliff, Chilean and Peruvian grasped in each other's arms as they had been hurled in the fury of battle to death below.
Along the beach from the cliffs to the ocean, lay numbers of the soldiers who had been wounded, and while endeavoring to reach the tempting waters and quench their thirst, had perished. Others, who in their delirium had drank its brine, died in more agony, and lay in strings along the side washed by the waves.
At the approach of a human being, flocks of hideous galanasas and great droves of condors would rise lazily, too heavy from their ghastly feast, to flap their monstrous wings.
It was a sight to sicken one forever of the vaunted glories of the battlefield.
Soon after the occupation, General Backadana issued a proclamation requiring all Peruvian officers to surrender. The Chileans knew that Boyton was in the country, and for what purpose, but he surrendered under his assumed name "Delaport," an engineer.
He was paroled, and went to Ancon, a village on the coast that had been deserted, and no Chilean guards had been placed there.
Plans were laid for his escape; but he found it impossible to get off to a steamer.
He procured a little boat and spent most of the time on the islands off the coast and among the caves, his American friends in Lima sending him provisions. For a companion he had a young Peruvian officer who also thought it well to keep under cover. For three weeks they amused themselves fishing, hunting, exploring, and several times they rowed far out to sea, in the hope of being picked up by some passing steamer and taken north, but the hope was not realized.