American ship John Watt in plain view of the lights of the city of Cape Town which by this time were beginning to twinkle in the distance. I fear that we were perilously near that sacred limit called the "marine league" within which captures were unlawful, but we saw no fence demarking private property and gave ourselves the benefit of the doubt.
The Vanderbilt carried twelve eleven-inch guns and she had come thousands of miles to capture the Alabama. She lay for some time at Cape Town and if her captain did not know where the Alabama was at that time, he must have been the only man in Cape Colony who was unaware of the fact that the Confederate cruiser was only a few miles away to the southward.
We had not proceeded very far when we discovered that innumerable fish, albacore and bonito, seemed to be following the ship, many of them swimming so close to her sides that they almost touched her. As we were under sail alone and going very slowly, there was nothing to disturb them except the occasional throwing of a grange (a three pronged harpoon) by the men. The fish were so close together that it was impossible to miss and we had quantities of fresh fish for all hands for ten or twelve days before they left us. The nights were dark and we witnessed a singular phenomenon caused by these myriads of fish rushing through the phosphorescent water, causing the ocean to be streaked, as though by flames, from horizon to horizon. In the daytime great schools of small fish could be seen flapping on the surface in mortal fright and giving one the idea of a huge silver salver as their shiny sides contrasted with the ocean's blue and shimmered in the sunlight. They had cause to be alarmed, as from under them hundreds of albacore would pop up, leaping fifteen or twenty feet in the air, each one of them having a victim in his mouth. Flying fish in efforts to escape were sailing in every direction through the air.
