Though encouraged we were by no means assured, as all the ships were still near and ready to avail themselves of any advantage that might offer. About six P.M. a squall of wind and rain passed over us, which induced us to take in our light sails before the rain covered us from the view of the enemy; but most of them were soon replaced, as the wind moderated. When the rain had passed, we had evidently gained a mile or more during its continuance. Still the pursuit was continued, and our own ship pressed forward to her utmost speed. The officers and men again passed the night at quarters. At daylight on the morning of the 19th our enemies had been left so far astern that danger from them was considered at an end, and at eight A.M. they at last relinquished the chase and hauled their wind. Our officers and crew could now indulge in some rest, of which the former had taken little for more than sixty hours.... The result may be remembered as an evidence of the advantages to be expected from perseverance under the most discouraging circumstances so long as _any_ chance for success may remain. After the prolonged labor and anxiety of the three days' chase, the people of the "Constitution" needed some relaxation of the strain, and Captain Hull put into Boston, where he remained a week. From there he sailed to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he took and burned some prizes; but hearing that the squadron from which he had just escaped was in the neighborhood, he steered for the southward. All the time the sailors were kept exercised at the guns, under the careful oversight of the officers; for the captain knew that the result, in any battle he might be called upon to fight, depended mostly upon skill in firing, which practice alone could give. On the 19th of August, at two o'clock in the afternoon, while cruising about in the ocean somewhere in the latitude of New York, the "Constitution" made a strange sail to the southward and eastward. Captain Hull had just before received information that an English frigate was cruising alone to the southward of him, and suspecting that this stranger was the object of his search, he bore down for her under all sail, she meanwhile making no attempt to get away. At three o'clock the ships were near enough to make each other out, and Hull's conjecture proved to be right. The stranger was the frigate "Guerrière," under Captain Dacres, which had now left the squadron of Commodore Broke, and was on her way to Halifax.