It was a gentle breeze that wafted her down over the greasy, dull-gray seas, but at 3.15 o’clock she was less than sixty yards away on the port (weather) quarter of the _Wasp_, and with a short twelve-pounder mounted on her forecastle she opened fire with both solid shot and grape. For eleven minutes her crew worked this gun while the Yankees stood at their stations in silence--the British fired five charges of shot and grape into the deck of the _Wasp_ while the New England backwoodsmen under a Tarheel captain eyed the blasts unflinchingly. The Tarheel Blakeley had been waiting for the enemy to draw nearer. At 3.26 o’clock she had done so to his satisfaction, and shoving down his helm he luffed up as if to cross her bows and opened fire as his guns began to bear--the backwoods gunners had a target more than one hundred feet long lying less than sixty feet away. It was their first live sea target. They were not quite so firm-nerved as they were later--but for eight minutes they worked their guns with an energy and skill that were simply stunning, while the enemy with equal energy replied. “The concussions of the explosions almost deadened what little way the vessels had on”--almost but not quite, and Blakeley hauled up his mainsail lest he cross the enemy’s bow too soon. The smoke rose up in huge volumes above the loftiest sails and rolled away in bulging clouds on every side, but the men at the great guns of the _Wasp_, peering through the sulphurous fog, hurled their shot with unerring accuracy, while those that were perched in the tops used their muskets to pick off the officers of the enemy, first of all. It was a desperate struggle, but the weight of metal, as well as the superiority of marksmanship was found with the American crew. They had opened fire at 3.26 P.M., and at 3.34 P.M. the enemy’s sails had been so damaged that the _Wasp’s_ mainsail was hauled up lest she drift clear across the stranger’s bow. And then for six minutes more the Yankees drove their shot through the splintering walls of the enemy “when, in consequence of her unmanageable state,” she “fell foul of the _Wasp_.” So says Allen, and so was the fact. “And in this position (she) became exposed to a destructive raking fire.” [Illustration: The _Wasp_ and _Reindeer_. _From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”_]