"Make the course south-west by south, Mr. Baskirk," said the young commander, after he had brought his trigonometry into use again.
Then it became a very exciting question to ascertain which was the faster steamer of the two.
[CHAPTER XXXI]
A VICTORIOUS UNION
The fog was coming and going in the distance, and at times the land could be just discerned. In spite of the number and vigilance of the blockading fleet, several hundred blockade-runners had succeeded in making their way into Cape Fear River, though several hundred also had been captured, not to mention a very considerable number that had been run ashore or burned when escape became hopeless.
It was the policy of the Confederacy to send out vessels to prey upon the commerce of the United States. Some of them began their depredations without making a port in the South, and a few of the swift steamers that succeeded in getting into Mobile, Wilmington, and other safe places, were fitted out for the work of destruction. The fog that prevailed inshore was favorable to blockade-runners; and if there was a vessel of this character in Cape Fear River, the early morning had been such as to tempt her to try to make her way through the blockaders to sea.
"She is not one of the ordinary steamers that run in and out of the river," said Mr. Baskirk, while he and the commander were still watching the progress of the chase, and Paul Vapoor was warming up the engine as he had done before.
"She is larger than the St. Regis, but hardly equal in size to the Bellevite," added Christy. "She cannot draw more than twelve or fourteen feet of water, or she could not have come out through those shallow channels at the mouth of Cape Fear River. She seems to have the speed to run away from her pursuers; but probably not one of them can make fifteen knots an hour."
The three pursuers of the blockade-runner had changed their course when the chase did so; but it was already evident that they had no chance to overhaul her. They were still three miles astern of her, while the St. Regis, at sunset, was not more than three. Not a shot had been fired by any one of the steamers, and it would have been a waste of ammunition to do so.
"We are gaining on her," said Christy, half an hour later. "That steamer is making sixteen knots at least."