ded to the challenge, and with her sails reduced to fighting trim,
her guns run out, and every man ready, she came down upon the Yankee
ship. On her forecastle she had rigged a light carronade, and coming up
from behind, she five times discharged this pointblank into the American
sloop; then in the light air the latter luffed round, firing her guns
as they bore, and the two ships engaged yard-arm to yard-arm. The guns
leaped and thundered as the grimy gunners hurled them out to fire and
back again to load, working like demons. For a few minutes the cannonade
was tremendous, and the men in the tops could hardly see the decks for
the wreck of flying splinters. Then the vessels ground together, and
through the open ports the rival gunners hewed, hacked, and thrust at
one another, while the black smoke curled up from between the hulls. The
English were suffering terribly. Captain Manners himself was wounded,
and realizing that he was doomed to defeat unless by some desperate
effort he could avert it, he gave the signal to board. At the call the
boarders gathered, naked to the waist, black with powder and spattered
with blood, cutlas and pistol in hand. But the Americans were ready.
Their marines were drawn up on deck, the pikemen stood behind the
bulwarks, and the officers watched, cool and alert, every movement of
the foe. Then the British sea-dogs tumbled aboard, only to perish by
shot or steel. The combatants slashed and stabbed with savage fury, and
the assailants were driven back. Manners sprang to their head to lead
them again himself, when a ball fired by one of the sailors in the
American tops crashed through his skull, and he fell, sword in hand,
with his face to the foe, dying as honorable a death as ever a brave man
died in fighting against odds for the flag of his country. As he fell
the American officers passed the word to board. With wild cheers the
fighting sailormen sprang forward, sweeping the wreck of the British
force before them, and in a minute the Reindeer was in their possession.
All of her officers, and nearly two thirds of the crew, were killed or
wounded; but they had proved themselves as skilful as they were brave,
and twenty-six of the Americans had been killed or wounded.

The Wasp set fire to her prize, and after retiring to a French port to
refit, came out again to cruise. For some time she met no antagonist
of her own size with which to wage war, and she had to exercise the
sharpest vigilance