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 three very fast American vessels were cruising, although five hundred miles from American waters.  I am ignorant, I confess, of the laws of blockade, or indeed if a law there be that allows its enforcement, and penalties to be enacted, five hundred miles away from the ports blockaded.  But it did seem strange that the men-of-war of a nation at peace with England should be allowed to cruise off her ports, to stop and examine trading vessels of all descriptions, to capture and send to New York, for adjudication, vessels on the mere suspicion of their being intended blockade-runners; and to chase and fire into real blockade-runners so near to the shore that on one occasion the shot and shell fell into a fishing village, and that within sight of an English man-of-war lying at anchor in the harbour at Nassau.  Surely it is time that some well-understood laws should be made, and rules laid down, or such doings will sooner or later recoil on their authors.

Having so little coal on board, we determined on making for the nearest point of the Bahama Islands, and luckily reached a queer little island called Green Turtle Quay, on the extreme north of the group, where was a small English colony, without being seen by the cruisers.  We had not been there long, however, before one of them came sweeping round the shore, and stopped unpleasantly near to us; even though we were inside the rock she hovered about outside, not a mile from us.

We were a tempting bait, but a considerable risk to snap, and I suppose the American captain could not quite make up his mind to capture a vessel (albeit a blockade-runner piled full of cotton) lying in an English port, insignificant though that port might be.  We had got a large white English ensign hoisted on a pole, thereby showing the nationality of the rock, should the cruiser be inclined to question it.  After many longing looks, she steamed slowly away, much to our satisfaction.  Coals were sent to us from Nassau the next day, which having been taken on board, we weighed anchor, keeping close to the reefs and islands all the way.  We steamed towards that port, and arrived safely, having made the in-and-out voyage, including the time in unloading and loading at Wilmington, in sixteen days.