Captain Porter professed to be in a towering rage; he ordered the lieutenant to go back at once with an order for the Peruvian to run under our lee, and then send an officer on board to apologize for having dared to fire at an English man-of-war. How that fellow scurried back! He never so much as suspected that we were other than what had been represented, and in the shortest possible space of time another lieutenant, wearing so much gold lace that he looked like a brazen image, came up the gangway ladder grinning and bowing like an ape. Captain Porter received him on the quarter, but never so much as invited him into the cabin, and Phil and I crowded well aft to hear what we allowed would be a mighty interesting conversation. The lieutenant reported that his ship was the Peruvian privateer _Nereyda_, armed with fifteen guns, and carrying a full crew. They were cruising for Americans, he said, and had already captured two,--the _Walker_ and the _Barclay_; but the British letter of marque _Nimrod_, a whaler, had driven their prize crew from the _Walker_ and taken possession of her. The Peruvian had mistaken us for the _Nimrod_, and fired for the purpose of showing that they did not count on having their prizes taken from them in such an unceremonious fashion. It puzzled me to make out how the Peruvians, who were under Spanish rule, dared to attack our vessels while Spain was not at war with the United States; but the old sea lawyers of the gun-deck explained matters that evening to their entire satisfaction, by saying the Peruvians must have believed that Spain, who was so dependent upon England, would soon declare war against us because the king of Great Britain had done so, and this would make the capture of the whalers legal. Whether that was the right view of the case or not, I can't say; but it satisfied our old shellbacks, and that was enough. But to go back to the Peruvian lieutenant who stood on the quarter shaking hands with himself because he had straightened out the matter of having fired on us. I suppose he thought our captain would pat him on the back for being engaged in the work of destroying Yankee whalers, and was most likely counting on being invited into the cabin to a blow-out of the best from the officers' stores. It was comical to see the fellow jump when Captain Porter gave a signal for the British ensign to be hauled down and the stars and stripes run up! He stared first at the flag, and then at the men amidships who were watching him, until our gun-deck crowd laughed aloud. Captain Porter scowled, for it wasn't good manners to make sport of a prisoner, and then told the Peruvian who we were, although there was little need of that after he had seen our flag.