Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

Chasing a sail is very much like pursuing a coy maiden, the very coyness sharpening the pursuit. The chase, in the present instance, seemed determined to run away from us; and as she was fast, and we were as determined to overhaul her as she was to run away, she led us a beautiful night-dance over the merry waters. The moon rose bright, soon after the chase commenced, and, striking upon the canvas of the fleeing vessel, lighted it up as though it had been a snow-bank. The American vessels are distinguished, above all others, for the whiteness of their canvas; being clothed, for the most part, in the fibre of our cotton-fields. The cut of the sails, and the taper of the spars of the chase looked American, and then the ship was cracking on every stitch of canvas that would draw, in the effort to escape—she must surely be American, we thought. And so we ‘looked on her, to lust after her,’ and gave our little ship the benefit of all our skill in seamanship. The speed of the two ships was so nearly matched, that, for the first hour or two, it was impossible to say whether we had gained on her an inch. We were both running dead before the wind, and this was not the Alabama's most favorable sailing-point. With her tall lower masts, and large fore-and-aft sails, she was better on a wind, or with the wind abeam. The chase was leading us away from our cruising-ground, and I should have abandoned it, if I had not had my pride of ship a little interested. It would never do for the Alabama to be beaten in the beginning of her cruise, and that, too, by a merchantman; and so we threw out all our ‘light kites’ to the wind, and gave her the studding-sails ‘alow and aloft.’ To make a long story short, we chased this ship nearly all night, and only came up with her a little before dawn; and when we did come up with her, she proved to be a Dane! She was the bark Overman, from Bankok, in Siam, bound to Hamburg. There had been no occasion, whatever, for this neutral ship to flee, and the long chase which she had given me was evidently the result of a little spleen; and so, to revenge myself, in a goodnatured way, I insisted upon all my belligerent rights. Though satisfied from her reply to my hail, that she was what she proclaimed