Meanwhile the cloud bank continued steadily to overspread the heavens, and at length obscured the moon, shutting off so much of her light that it immediately became difficult in the extreme to discern the chase any longer, even with the assistance of the telescope; and I was not in the least surprised when, a minute or two later, the look-out aloft hailed to say that he had lost sight of her.  But I had not; I could still see her through the glass, although with momentarily increasing difficulty as the pall of cloud crept onward across the sky, ever cutting off more and still more of the moon's light; and at length the moment arrived when I also was compelled to admit to myself that I could no longer see her.  I removed the telescope from my eye for a minute or two to give my strained and smarting eyeballs a rest, and closed my eyelids in order to completely exclude from them even such dim and uncertain light as still remained; then, knowing exactly where to look for the stranger, I once more pointed the instrument in that direction, searching the horizon closely and carefully for the smallest blur that might betray her.  But the effort was useless; she had vanished.