While the fight between the batteries was going on, one hundred solid nine-inch shot were sent up from Fortress Monroe on the steamer Rancocas to the Minnesota. At a quarter-past ten o’clock the Merrimac and Monitor had come into pretty close quarters, the former giving the latter two broadsides in succession. They were promptly replied to by the Monitor. The firing was so rapid that both craft were obscured in columns of white smoke. The ramparts of the fort, the rigging of the vessels in port, the houses and the bend were all crowded with sailors, soldiers and civilians. When the rapid firing alluded to took place, these spectators were singularly silent, anxious and doubtful of the result. Their impatience was soon removed by the full figure of the Monitor, with the stars and stripes flying at her stern, steaming around the Merrimac, moving with the ease of a duck on the water. The distance between the vessels was forty feet. In this circuit the Monitor’s guns were not idle, as she fired shot after shot at her formidable antagonist. At eleven A. M., the Minnesota opened fire, and assisted the Monitor in engaging the Merrimac. She fired nine-inch solid shot with good accuracy, but with apparently little effect. The Merrimac returned the fire with shell, one of which struck and exploded the boiler of the gunboat Dragon, which was alongside the Minnesota, endeavoring to get her off. For the next hour the battle raged fiercely between the Merrimac on the rebel side and the Union vessels, the Monitor, Minnesota and Whitehall, but with no particular result. The Minnesota presenting the best mark, the Merrimac fired at her frequently, alternately giving the Monitor a powerful shot. The Merrimac made several attempts to run at full speed past the Monitor to attack and run down the Minnesota. All these attempts were parried, as it were, by the Monitor. In one of these desperate efforts the Merrimac ran her plow or ram with terrible force against the side of the Monitor; but it only had the effect of careening the latter vessel in the slightest degree. The rebel boats Yorktown and Patrick Henry kept at a safe distance from the Monitor. The former vessel, at the beginning of the fight, had the temerity to come within range of the Monitor. The latter fired one shot at her which entered her pilot-house, carrying it away, when she retired out of range.