Captain Chatard, not content with exercising a kind of police superintendence over the port of San Juan, began a series of petty annoyances, which, had they been intended to provoke Walker into a collision with the United States forces, could not have been better contrived. While the American captain professed to maintain a strict neutrality, he nevertheless issued orders to the expeditionists, and sent his boats out to practise firing where the filibusters on duty were exposed to injury unless they abandoned their posts. His officers insisted upon landing and entering Walker's camp without a pass; and when Walker, with more dignity than discretion, threatened to shoot anybody found trespassing within his lines, Captain Chatard retorted in a note (which Walker sent to Commodore Paulding,) assuring him that he would retaliate. "The childish follies," as Walker characterized them, of Captain Chatard failing to provoke a collision, Commodore Paulding, on the 7th of December, sent an imperative summons to surrender. Resistance to such a demand, backed as it was by two frigates and a complaisant British captain, who volunteered to aid Paulding in annihilating the American filibusters, would have been madness. On the next day Commodore Paulding landed a force of three hundred and fifty men in howitzer barges and formed them in order of battle, while the broadsides of the _Saratoga_ were sprung to bear on the camp. Captain Engle proceeded to the tent of General Walker and presented the demand for surrender, adding, "General, I am sorry to see you here. A man like you is worthy to command better men." Walker replied briefly that the virtue of his men would be apparent if their number and equipments were one half those of his captors.