y saw, about a mile ahead of us, a remarkable
ripple, which we rightly, as it turned out, conjectured was that
referred to in the book. As soon as we had crossed it, we steered the
usual course of the current of the Gulf Stream, that here ran from two
to three miles an hour. Seeing us alter our course, the cruiser did the
same; but she had _not_ crossed the ripple on the edge of the stream,
and the course she was now steering tended to keep her for some time
from doing so. The result soon made it evident that the observations in
the book were correct; for until she too crossed the ripple into the
stream, we dropped her rapidly astern, whereby we increased our distance
to at least seven miles.

It was now noon, from which time the enemy again began to close with
us, and at five o'clock was not more than three miles distant. At six
o'clock she opened a harmless fire with the Parrot gun in her bow, the
shot falling far short of us. The sun set at a quarter to seven, by
which time she had got so near that she managed to send two or three
shots over us, and was steadily coming up.

Luckily, as night came on, the weather became very cloudy, and we were
on the dark side of the moon, now setting in the West, which
occasionally breaking through the clouds astern of the cruiser, showed
us all her movements, while we must have been very difficult to make
out, though certainly not more than a mile off. All this time she kept
firing away, thinking, I suppose, that she would frighten us into
stopping. If we had gone straight on, we should doubtless have been
caught; so we altered our course two points to the eastward. After
steaming a short distance we stopped quite still, blowing off steam
under water, not a spark or the slightest smoke showing from the funnel;
and we had the indescribable satisfaction of seeing our enemy steam past
us, still firing ahead at some imaginary vessel.

This had been a most exciting chase and a very narrow escape; night only
saved us from a New York prison. All this hard running had made an
awful hole in our coal-bunkers, and as it was necessary to keep a stock
for a run off the blockaded Bahama Islands, we were obliged to reduce
our expenditure to as small a quantity as possible. However we were well
out to sea, and after having passed the line of cruisers between
Wilmington and Bermuda, we had not much to fear till we approached the
British possessions of Nassau and the adjacent islands, where two or