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.