Daylight broke with thick, hazy weather, nothing being in sight.  We went on all right till half-past eight o’clock, when the weather cleared up, and there was a large paddle-wheel cruiser (that we must have passed very near to in the thick weather) about six miles astern of us.  The moment she saw us she gave chase.  After running for a quarter of an hour it was evident that with our heavy cargo on board, the cruiser had the legs of us, and as there was a long day before us for the chase, things looked badly.  We moved some cotton aft to immerse our screws well; but still the cruiser was steadily decreasing her distance from us, when an incident of a very curious nature favoured us for a time.

It is mentioned in the book of sailing directions, that the course of the Gulf Stream (in the vicinity of which we knew we were) is in calm weather and smooth water plainly marked out by a ripple on its inner and outer edges.  We clearly 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.