Lautaro's action with the Spanish frigate Esmeralda, when, having leaped on board the enemy's ship at the head of the willing stream of his men, the two vessels swung apart, and O'Brien, fighting to the last, was unavoidably left to face the Esmeralda's men with no more than thirty devoted followers. All this was only ten hours after her capstan had been manned for the first time in the Chilean service by the Lautaro's new and scratch crew! And this crew in some ways was one of the most remarkable that ever manned a warship. The expert division was represented by a hundred foreign seamen. Beyond these were one hundred and fifty Chileans, many of whom had never before boarded a sea-going vessel, but whose enthusiasm had been so keen that many of them swam to the ship from the shore in order to make certain of being included in the crew! Such was the Lautaro and her crew, and it was this latter type of sailor that, under Cochrane and his subordinate officers, speedily piled up a record of deeds such as any of the old maritime nations of the world would have been proud to claim for their own. When, whether by capture or purchase, the Chilean fleet increased to more formidable proportions, it was still officered in the main by Englishmen, although a considerable sprinkling of North Americans and other nationalities now assisted, and Captain Dias, Miller's former comrade in the Buenos Aires artillery, being clearly an amphibious person, is once again seen on the waters in command of the little twenty-gun ship Chacabuco. Efficiency soon began to oil the springs of the fleet, and the Chileans, gaining experience, showed themselves even finer sailors than their first commanders had dared to hope. Officers and men-though they frequently failed to understand each other's lay or nautical speech-began to swear by each other's merits. Their ships became those fortunate things that are known in the British navy as "happy ships." When at the top of their business, the crews aimed their guns and boarded with ardor; when off duty, the officers would dance on the quarter deck, the men in the waist and on the forecastle. Miller saw to it that his marines kept in the forefront of this progress of efficiency, and they repaid his efforts to the full. On one occasion he was sent ashore with a flag of truce which the Spaniards violated, and had it not been for the intervention of some honorable royalist officers, and for the angry threats of retaliation hurled against the Spanish commander by his comrades afloat, it is probable that his life would have been sacrificed to the vindictiveness of the Spanish general Sanchez. When he eventually returned in safety to his own vessel, Miller found that his marines had gone aft in a body, and had begged the commodore to allow them to land and to rescue their officer, an attempt which must have meant certain death to them! After much successful cruising Commodore Blanco, accompanied by Miller, set out for the Chilean capital of Santiago, and met with a regular triumphal reception as they approached the city. Incidentally in the course of this journey Miller reveals that even among the very gallant and warm-hearted Chileans there were pressed men. "The approach," he relates, "was rendered inexpressibly delightful by the cheering welcome. . . . Even a party of recruits, tied hand to hand, halted and uttered their vivas as heartily as did their escort." After this Miller was plunged head over ears into the gaieties of Santiago, even then a town of arch-hospitality, at which delightful place even then, as Miller remarks, Chileans and foreigners associated together perhaps more than in any other great town of South America. At the end of November, 1818, Lord Cochrane arrived at Valparaiso to take over the supreme command of the Chilean navy. This was followed by a season of that festivity which is so dear to the Chilean heart, and balls and entertainments of all kinds abounded. As a return for the numerous affairs of the kind given by the Chileans, Lord Cochrane in the full costume of a Highland chief presided at an elaborate banquet held on St. Andrew's day. Miller's brother renders a diplomatic account of the convivial revelry on that occasion: "Extraordinary good cheer was followed by toasts drank with uncommon enthusiasm in extraordinary good wine. No one escaped its enlivening influence. St. Andrew was voted the patron saint of champagne, and many curious adventures of that night have furnished the subject of some still remembered anecdotes." Now, were vulgar slang permitted in a work of this nature, surely the verdict on this wise and guarded account would be "'Nuff said!" It breathes out a reminiscent exhilaration which in itself is most graphic. No doubt these good fellows of tried gallantry let themselves go to their hearts' content, and, each being profoundly satisfied with the veritas (or veritate for the classic-minded) in vino that he found in the other, the budding friendship between the Chileans and British. must have attained its intimate majority then and there. This undoubtedly was one of the first of those innumerable Chileno gatherings upon which the Andes frowned on from above, and the blue Pacific smiled at from below! The officers of the two British warships Andromache and Blossom, just then in Valparaiso Bay, lost no time in associating themselves with these festivities. The first regular race course on the Pacific coast was improvised; a level space in the neighborhood of the town was cleared of its cactus and scrub, and then followed cricket matches, and the bang of the leather ball against those queerly shaped old bats of the early nineteenth century. But let the contemporary chronicler from whose pages |