The _Huascar_, accompanied by a consort, the _Union_, was cruising in the neighbourhood, and at daylight on the 8th of October the first Chilean division sighted her. Grau fled, and was gradually drawing away from his pursuers when, to his horror, three columns of smoke appeared on the horizon directly forward. He was caught between the two Chilean squadrons. The _Union_ had speed enough to slip by the enemy, but the _Huascar_ was too slow. Grau's only chance was to close with the _Cochrane_ before the _Blanco_ could come up astern, and he went straight for the former. At half past nine the _Huascar_ fired the first shot, the distance being about three thousand yards. It fell short and only the fourth shot took effect. The _Cochrane_ then replied, and though the practice on both sides was wild, the two ships soon came so close that the machine guns were brought into effective play. A shot disabled the _Huascar's_ turret, and in desperation Grau tried repeatedly to ram, but was foiled by the quick turns which the _Cochrane's_ twin screws enabled her to make. Just half an hour after the action began a shell struck his conning-tower, blowing the heroic Peruvian into atoms. A few minutes later the _Blanco_ came up and added her missiles to the storm of shots which the _Cochrane_ and the smaller consorts were pouring upon the doomed _Huascar_. Nevertheless no one thought of striking. Hardly had Grau been blown to pieces than the executive officer had his head taken clean off by a shell from the _Blanco_, and the officer next in seniority was severely wounded. A few moments later the lieutenant who succeeded to the command was killed, and his successor, in turn, was wounded before the end of the action. When the ship finally struck, an hour and a half after the first shot was fired, one of the juniors was in command, and sixty-four of the complement of one hundred and ninety-three officers and men lay killed or wounded on the deck. The Chileans were now in absolute control of the sea, and could land an army when and where they pleased. The Bolivian sea-coast, inhabited almost exclusively by Chilean miners, and inaccessible overland from Bolivia proper, had fallen into Chile's hands at the opening of the war, but Grau's success in immobilising the Chilean navy had been taken advantage of by the Peruvians to ship nine thousand troops to their own nitrate province, where they could conveniently attack the Chileans who occupied the Bolivian territory to their south, or defend their own most valuable piece of property. But although this army was in Peruvian territory the naval victory of the Chileans isolated it almost completely. A hundred miles of rough, rainless desert, intercepted by deep ravines transverse to the coast, separated it from Tacna, where fertile valleys begin and communication with the rest of Peru becomes possible.