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 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.