Captain Rodgers repeated his question, and to his intense surprise he got for an answer a shot from the stranger that struck the _President’s_ mainmast. Like an echo to this shot was one, fired without orders, from the _President_. To this the stranger replied with three shots in quick succession, and then with a broadside. At that the impatient gunner who had fired from the _President_ without orders had opportunity to try again under orders, and the rest of the crew joined in. For ten minutes they loaded the guns with a rapidity well worth noting, and fired with a deliberation and precision never to be forgotten. And then the stranger almost ceased firing. Because she was manifestly much inferior to the _President_ in armament, Captain Rodgers ordered his men to cease firing, but no sooner had this order been obeyed than the stranger opened once more, and his fire had to be returned. The order was obeyed with such increasing good-will that, in spite of darkness and growing wind and sea, one broadside knocked the stranger helpless, so that she wore around stern on, where another broadside might rake her fore and aft. Now when Rodgers once more hailed he received a reply, but owing to his position to windward he could not understand it, but it is recorded that the captain pluckily said “no” when asked if he had struck. However, Rodgers ran down under the stranger’s lee and hove to, where he might be of service in case she should sink, and there he waited for daylight. During the night the two vessels drifted apart, but at 8 o’clock the next morning the _President_ ranged up and sent Lieutenant Creighton on board the stranger, to “regret the necessity which had led to such an unhappy result,” and offer assistance, if any were needed. It was then learned that she was the “twenty-gun corvette _Little Belt_, Commander Arthur B. Bingham.” She had carried a crew of one hundred and twenty-one all told, and of these no less than eleven were killed, and twenty-one wounded--a list of casualties amounting to more than one-fourth of all she carried, although, even by the British account (see Allen) the time that elapsed between the first hail and the last was but half an hour, while the time passed in actual combat did not exceed fifteen minutes. On the _President_ one boy was slightly hurt by a splinter. [Illustration: The _Little Belt_ Breaking up at Battersea. _From an engraving by Cooke of a drawing by Francia._]