It was a battle off Cape Hatteras in the tail end of a Hatteras gale. The ships rolled and pitched over the heavy cross seas, and wallowed through the hollows. The crews, as they loaded their guns, saw the long rammers pointed to the clouds at one roll, and saw them dip in the spoondrift that rose to the port sills at the next. The muzzles of the guns were even dipped into the smother of it at times. The spray from the wave-crests in great masses splashed over the bulwarks. The smoke from the guns was snatched away by the gale, leaving clear targets for the gunners, who, from the excitement of it all, swabbed, and rammed, and fired--who shouted as they hauled out their guns to aim, and cheered as they fired their iron hail across the tossing seas. The roar and whizz of the gale were whelmed in the thunder of the broadsides and the scream of projectiles. [Illustration: Diagram of the WASP-FROLIC BATTLE.] They swabbed, and rammed, and fired in frantic haste under the red cross--fired the moment the muzzles of the guns were hauled out through the bulwarks. Under the “gridiron flag” they loaded in haste and then calmly waited till the roll of the ship was right to make each projectile do its appointed work. The Englishman fired three broadsides by count to two of the Yankees, but scarce a projectile from the enemy struck the Yankee’s hull. Nevertheless some damage was done by British projectiles. Within four minutes after the first broadside a shot struck the _Wasp’s_ maintopmast not far above the cap and over it went like a tree before a hurricane. The yards fell across the fore braces and “rendered the head-yards unmanageable.” Ten minutes later (11.46 A.M.) the mizzen-topgallant-mast was shot off and “at twenty minutes from the beginning of the action every brace and most of the rigging was shot away” on the _Wasp_. But both vessels were driving along before the wind. The impulse of the gale upon their rigging was strong enough to give them steerage way. But the cutting away of the two masts on the _Wasp_ left her in such plight that the enemy had only to wear ship and haul to the wind on the port tack to escape. Some kinds of sea-fighters would have done that quickly, but not those of the Anglo-Saxon blood.