The _Wasp_ was detained at L’Orient until August 27th, refitting, and then she got away to continue her work on the high seas. It was her luck to fall in with another British brig-sloop, within four days--a sloop like the _Reindeer_--and few, if any, more instructive pages of history can be found than those that compare the two actions which the _Wasp_ had with these vessels of the class she was designed to destroy with ease. The second brig-sloop to meet her fate under the guns of the _Wasp_ was the _Avon_, “commander the Honourable James Arbuthnot,” and the battle was fought on September 1, 1814. That was a most interesting day in the lives of the _Wasp’s_ crew. To begin the day they fell in with a fleet of ten merchantmen, guarded by the big seventy-four-gun British liner _Armada_ and a bomb ship. The liner was an average ship of her class, but the lively _Wasp_ dashed boldly into the fleet and cut out the brig _Mary_ loaded with cannon captured from the Spaniards and other military stores. Having effectually fired the _Mary_, the _Wasp_ tried for another, but the _Armada_ chased her away this time and she went hunting other game, and found it. The covey included a fleet of four vessels, of which, as the event showed, three were British brig-sloops of the class of the beaten _Reindeer_, and a merchantman that had been recaptured from a Yankee privateer. The vessels were rather widely separated, one of them, the _Castilian_ by name, having gone in chase of the privateer. What another of the brig sloops, the _Tartarus_, was doing is not told in any printed account, while the third, which was the _Avon_, Captain Arbuthnot, had started with the _Castilian_ in chase of the Yankee privateer, but had not been fast enough to keep up with the procession. So it happened that she was right in the way as the _Wasp_ came along in the first shades of night. A fresh southeast wind was blowing and the _Avon_ was bowling along toward the southwest. As the _Wasp_ came on in chase, the _Avon_ hoisted signal flags and then signal lights and fired some rockets. The _Wasp_, of course, was unable to answer these, and the _Avon_ was cleared for action. No effort to run away having been made by the _Avon_--on the contrary she fired a shot from her stern chaser--the _Wasp_ had arrived close on her port quarter by 9.20 o’clock when one of the officers of the _Avon_ shouted: “What ship is that?” Captain Blakeley replied by repeating the question. Again the _Avon_ hailed, when Blakeley replied: “Heave to and I’ll let you know who I am,” and then fired the little twelve-pounder he had taken from the forecastle of the captured _Reindeer_. At that the _Avon_ set her foretop-mast studding sail and began firing her stern chaser. [Illustration: The _Wasp_ and _Avon_. _From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”_]