"You don’t tell me!" he exclaimed, glancing over the side. Then he looked up at the clumsy old steamer, ploughing along a quarter of a mile to leeward. "By Jove, Captain, we’re passing her as if she were standing still!" Indeed, we were; the spectacle, from a romantic point of view, was an inspiring one, although it must have been a jealous sight for the German captain. But now we were drawing in toward the approaches to New York harbour; our race had been with daylight as well as with steam. For I’d promised myself that, by hook or crook, we would arrive that night. I scanned the horizon anxiously for a pilot boat—in those days the New York pilot boats were small but exceptionally sea-worthy two-masted schooners; and at seven o’clock in the evening, with half an hour of daylight still remaining, caught sight of one standing toward us on the weather bow. We came together rapidly. By this time we had left the _Energie_ a couple of miles astern. When the pilot boat was within a mile of us, I called Mr. Ridley and the mate of the _Santiago_, and had a private conference with them; gave them instructions to place all hands in position for certain manoeuvres, but to keep the men out of sight behind the bulwarks. Stepping to the after companionway, I sang out below "Captain Potter, ask the ladies to come on deck and see us take the pilot on board" They hurried up in a flutter of excitement, the captain in their wake. A glance along the maindeck told him that something unusual was about to happen, but he kept his own counsel. It’s hard to educate a taciturn Britisher to new ways, but the constant surprise of the experience through which Captain Potter was passing had begun to make an impression. The pilot boat was now running down to us on the opposite tack, about four points on our weather bow. She expected us, of course, to heave-to and wait for her. We kept on, however, at a racing clip, making not the slightest movement to check our terrific progress. To add zest to the game, the wind puffed substantially at that moment, sending us through the water with a rush really magnificent. I could see that, on board the pilot boat, they didn’t know what to make of it. As we drew up on them, changing the angle of their bearing, they shifted their course little by little, letting their craft fall off before the wind and following us with her nose. In another moment she stood directly abeam of us, less than three hundred yards away. With a gesture of dismissal, as it were, they hauled the schooner up again on the port tack, prepared to stand away to sea and leave us to our own devices.