172 EARLY CAREER OF MR. NOBBS. 
always done, both in their own country, and 
elsewhere." A very spirited account of this 
remarkable transaction, the success of which 
surpassed all that could have been imagined, 
is met with in Lady Callcott's "Journal of H 
Residence in Chili in 1822." 
Lieutenant Nobbs was also engaged in a 
severe conflict with a Spanish gun-brig, near 
Arauco, a fortress of Chili. He had been or- 
dered up a river near the town ; the object being 
to recover a quantity of property belonging to 
British and American merchants, which had 
been seized by the piratical general Benevideis. 
Mr. Nobbs, when in command of a gun-boat, 
after sustaining the loss of forty-eight men, in 
killed and wounded, out of a party of sixty-four, 
was taken prisoner by the troops of that despe- 
rate adventurer and robber. 
The sixteen unhappy captives were marched 
off to prison, and were all shot, with the excep- 
tion of Lieutenant Nobbs, and three English 
seamen. These four, after remaining for three 
weeks under sentence of death, were quite un- 
expectedly exchanged for four officers attached 
to Benevideis' army; one of the officers, a 
major, being fortunately a brother-in-law of 
Benevideis. Mr. Nobbs had seen his fellow- 
prisoners, from time to time, led out to be shot, 
and had heard the reports of the muskets con- 
signing them to death. He retains to this day 
a vivid memory of that dreadful fusillade. 
Lady Callcott states that Benevideis was the 
son of the inspector of a prison, and had been 
a foot-soldier in the first army of the Chilenos 
