Before long, the torpedo-boat destroyer was close beside us, and began to evince an interest in us, which, inexplicable from the first, soon became extremely embarrassing. At a distance of fifty meters she slowly passed by. On the commander's bridge stood all the officers, each provided with marine glasses, through which they examined our ship with great curiosity. From the lively conversation that was going on between the officers, we concluded that they were talking about us. The destroyer passed around us, close under our stern, and all the binoculars were turned toward our ship's name, which had long since disappeared under a coat of the thickest white paint. We were just congratulating ourselves that we had bluffed her, when, at a distance of 5000 meters, she suddenly turned, and lay to. At this, I could not rid myself of the thought that we had been expected.
At the destroyer's approach we had got our war flag ready to run up, for if we had been spoken, we would, of course, have replied by a display of our colors.
In the course of the afternoon our attendant, whom by this time we had identified by the ship's name as the Dutch destroyer, _Lynx_, left us, and disappeared in the direction of Padang. In our cheerful but overhasty conclusion that she was preceding us into port to give notice of our coming, so that maids of honor might be in waiting, and triumphal arches be prepared for us, we were doomed to disappointment, however.
By nightfall we lay close before the small, flat coral islands that lie in front of the entrance to the harbor. We could see the lights of a steamer that was coming out of the harbor. Another was moving into port. We looked upon both of them with suspicion, as we supposed one of them to be our companion of the foregoing afternoon. We therefore carefully screened the _Ayesha's_ lights. We had made no mistake, for in signaling to the incoming steamer, the outgoing ship revealed herself to be our old acquaintance, the _Lynx_. To our regret, she had sighted us in spite of all the precaution we had taken. Again she became our close companion, and for a while her green and red side lights could be seen immediately astern, at a distance of not more than one hundred meters. We felt truly sorry for the _Lynx_. It must have been very irritating to her to have to trundle behind us at the wonderful speed of one nautical mile, a speed which, with the light breeze blowing, the _Ayesha_ could not exceed. The engineers at the 1000 horse-power engines of the _Lynx_ probably wished us elsewhere more than once that night.