"They have three hours’ start," said Mr. Parker to the Sub, "and it will be a very long stern chase." "What have we to do if we catch them?" he asked. "Search them," replied Mr. Parker. "But what if they won’t let us?" "Search them," replied Mr. Parker, with a queer twinkle in his eye, and then I knew that there might be a fight. It gave me a funny feeling in my stomach, but I knew I was jolly lucky to get the chance and so ought to feel glad, and I really think I did. We were all going it now with a vengeance. The smoke from "No. 1" and "No. 2" nearly blinded us, and we were shaking and throbbing as the hum of the engines gradually rose, our bows coming out of the water, and our stern squatting down in a mass of foam as we rushed into the wake of the others ahead of us. I had never been so fast in my life, and was holding on to the bridge rails to avoid being blown away. We went on like this for hours, and I felt too excited to go down below and get anything to eat. That shows what a ripping thing it is to be rushing along in a destroyer with an enemy ahead. Presently we formed line abreast, "No. 2" on the starboard and we on the port side of "No. 1", about three miles away from each other, so as to cover more ground. As it was getting dark we saw "No. 1" slow down to speak a small merchant steamer going north, and directly afterwards we were ordered back to Suez to inform Captain Helston that all three Patagonians had been sighted steaming south very fast. Round went our helm, we heeled well over, our stern swung round, and we were off on our way back before you could say "knife"; but you should have heard what Mr. Parker and the Sub said, and the quarter-master too, for that matter, only he didn’t do it so loudly. We made our number to the _Laird_ at Suez early next morning, having kept up nearly twenty-seven knots for the last twenty hours—a jolly good performance. We hadn’t to wait long, for we ran alongside the _Sylvia_, filled up with coal, took ten tons in bags on deck, and away we went for Aden at twenty knots—quite an easy, comfortable speed. I had to see the coal aboard, and made myself beastly dirty, and much missed the gun-room bath on board the _Laird_. We got into Aden on the third afternoon without meeting any adventures. "No. 2" and "No. 1" were there, and so were two of the three Patagonians. Mr. Pattison and Mr. Lang, the Skippers of "No. 1" and "No. 2", came aboard of us directly. They told us that they had reached Aden only four hours after the Patagonians. They immediately made arrangements to coal, and meanwhile had gone on board the two Patagonians in frock coats and swords, and been received in a very friendly manner, and shown all over both, and not a trace of Staunton, Hopkins, or Chinese, for the matter of that, could they see. "We felt rather sold, you can imagine," said Mr. Pattison, "at having our long chase for nothing—a very tame ending."