For some two months after the above adventure, the torpedo men laid under the shelter of the batteries on the top of Moro, a high bluff.

They made sorties every night; but the Chileans were on the watch for them, besides the sloop was so slow as to be almost useless, and Paul's Peruvians had a wholesome dread of the enemies' guns which could be turned with great rapidity in any direction.

Daily they sailed to some barren, desolate island, hoping for a chance to blow one of the Chilean's vessels out of the water.

The Huascar stood up and down the coast at times, almost within range of the Peruvian guns.

As she was one of the vessels Paul wanted to get, he determined to lay in her track and risk an attempt to destroy her.
With such intention, he ran the sloop out as far as he could, one night, and went overboard in his dress, with a screw torpedo, that would have blown the Huascar as high as the topmost peaks of San Lorenzo.