Trading was forgotten--the busiest rushed out of their offices and shops; every cab on the stand loaded regardless of municipal regulations, and vanished up the Kloof road or down Somerset road. Horsemen galloped about the street, and then spurred their steeds right up the Lion's rump. Men, women and children were seized as with frenzy, and rushed about here, there and everywhere, asking and telling the most contradictory and unheard of things. "They were firing at each other!--at close quarters!--the smoke and roar of the battle could be quite distinctly heard from the breakwater!" And the shore from that point round to Camp's bay was, in an incredibly short space of time, lined with no inconsiderable portion of the madly excited citizens of Cape Town. * * * The fine bark Sea Bride, having run the gauntlet of the Confederate fleet on the Atlantic, had deemed her voyage to be approaching a happy end, and, with full sail set, a favoring breeze and the star-spangled banner at her peak, she sped onward like a thing of life and beauty, in full view of the port to which she was bound. Dimly in the north she descried a steamer standing likewise for the bay, and congratulated herself on her good luck in arriving just in time to receive the latest American news of Vicksburg or the Rappahanock by the English mail. Fast as the bark went, the steamer sped faster still, and in a very unaccountable manner seemed to be bearing down upon the Yankee. In less than half an hour the suspicious craft had fairly overhauled her, and, with the dreadful Confederate flag run up at the peak, left little doubt that the Sea Bride was to become the prey of the redoubtable cruiser, the Alabama. But still, as it appeared to us who witnessed the whole scene from Green Point shore, the Northerner determined to strain every nerve to escape his foe and reach the neutral waters within the charmed league from shore.