But the alarm proved false.

The red light that had been so confidently reckoned on as the port lantern of some steamer moving across the Sumter's bows, was at length set down as a mere meteor, or it might be some star setting crimson through the dim haze of the distant horizon.

Luck seemed quite to have deserted the Confederate flag.

They were lying in the very track of vessels between San Roque and New York.
Allowing a space of seventy-five miles on either side of the Sumter's station as the extent of this track, and calculating upon a radius of observation from her masthead of fifteen miles, one-fifth of the whole number passing should certainly have come within her ken.

Yet in the course of seventeen weary days one vessel only had been seen, and the Sumter's stock of patience was beginning to run very low.
At length, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 5th October, the welcome cry was again heard.