On the 20th, this intention was notified by an order, stating that on the following day I should make the attack with the boats of the squadron and the San Martin, the crew of which received the order with loud cheers, volunteers for the boats eagerly pressing forward from all quarters.

In place of preparing to second the operations, Captain Guise sent me a note refusing to serve with any other but the officers under arrest—­stating that unless they were restored, he must resign his command.  My reply was that I would neither restore them nor accept his resignation, without some better reason for it than the one alleged.  Captain Guise answered, that my refusal to restore his officers was a sufficient reason for his resignation, whereupon I ordered him to weigh anchor on a service of importance; the order being disobeyed on the ground that he could no longer act, having given over the command of the ship to Lieutenant Shepherd.  Feeling that something like a mutiny was being excited, and knowing that Guise and his colleague, Spry, were at the bottom of the matter, I ordered the latter to proceed with the Galvarino to Chorillos, when he also requested leave to resign, as “his friend Captain Guise had been compelled so to do, and he had entered the Chilian navy conditionally to serve only with Captain Guise, under whose patronage he had left England.”  Such was the state of mutiny on board the Galvarino, that I deputed my flag-captain, Crosbie, to restore order, when Spry affected to consider himself superseded, and claimed exemption from martial law.  I therefore tried him by court-martial, and dismissed him from the ship.

The two officers now made their way to head-quarters, where General San Martin immediately made Spry his naval aide-de-camp, thus promoting him in the most public manner for disobedience to orders, and in defiance of the sentence of the court-martial; this being pretty conclusive proof that they had been acting under the instructions of General San Martin himself, for what purpose will appear in the course of the narrative.  The course now pursued by General San Martin sufficiently showed that the disturbance previously made at Valparaiso emanated also from himself, and that in both cases the mutinous officers felt quite secure in his protection; though I will do both the credit of supposing them ignorant at the time of the treacherous purposes of which they were afterwards the instruments.

Knowing that I should take their punishment into my own hands if they returned to the squadron, General San Martin kept both about his own person at head-quarters, where they remained.