After repairing the shot holes and other damage, we were under the impression that no further harm from running ashore had come to her, as all leaks were apparently stopped and the ship was quite tight. The result proved us to be sadly wrong on this point. After loading our usual cargo we started down the river all right, and waited for nightfall in order to cross the bar and run through the fleet. No sooner had we crossed it and found ourselves surrounded by cruisers than the chief engineer rushed on to the bridge, saying the water was already over the stoke-hole plates, and he feared that the ship was sinking. At the same moment a quantity of firewood which was stowed round one of the funnels (and which was intended to eke out our somewhat scanty coal supply) caught fire, and flames burst out. [Illustration: _WILL-O'-THE-WISP'S_ DASH FOR WILMINGTON. _To face page 106._] This placed us in a pretty predicament, as it showed our whereabouts to two cruisers which were following us, one on each quarter. They at once opened a furious cannonade upon us; however, although shells were bursting all around and shot flying over us, all hands worked with a will, and we soon extinguished the flames, which were acting as a treacherous beacon to our foes. Fortunately the night was intensely dark, and nothing could be seen beyond a radius of thirty or forty yards, so, thanks to this, we were soon enabled, by altering our helm, to give our pursuers the slip, whilst they probably kept on their course. We had still the other enemy to deal with; but our chief engineer and his staff had meanwhile been hard at work and had turned on the "bilge-injection" and "donkey-pumps." Still, the leak was gaining upon us, and it became evident that the severe shaking which the ship got when run aground had started the plates in her bottom. The mud had been sucked up when she lay in the river at Wilmington, thus temporarily repairing the damage; but when she got into the sea-way the action of the water opened them again. Even the steam pumps now could not prevent the water from gradually increasing; four of our eight furnaces were extinguished, and the firemen were working up to their middles in water. It was a critical time when daylight broke, dull and threatening. The captain was at the wheel, and I at the mast-head (all other hands being employed at the pumps, and even baling), when, not four miles off, I sighted a cruiser broadside on. She turned round as if preparing to give chase, and I thought we were done for, as we could not have got more than three or four knots an hour out of our crippled boat. To my great joy, however, I found our alarm was needless, for she evidently had not seen us, and instead of heading turned her stern towards us and disappeared into a thick bank of clouds.