Order was eventually restored, and the _Aspasia_, who had been raked by her active opponent during the time that she was thrown up in the wind, continued her course, and as she passed the stern of the French frigate, luffed up and returned the compliment. The latter, anxious in his crippled state for the support of the batteries, which had already seriously injured his opponent, continued to forge inshore. "We shall weather her now;--'bout ship, Mr Pearce. Recollect, my lads," said Captain M---, when the ship was about, "you'll reserve your fire till we touch her sides; then all hands to board." The _Aspasia_ ranged up on the weather quarter of her antagonist-- Pearce, the master, conning her by the captain's directions, so that the fore-chains of the French vessel should be hooked by the spare anchor of the _Aspasia_. The enemy, who, in his disabled state, was not in a situation to choose whether he would be boarded or not, poured in a double-shotted and destructive broadside; and it was well for Captain M--- that his ship's company had received the reinforcement which they had from the _Susanne_, for the French frigate was crowded with men, and being now within pistol-shot, the troops, who were so thick on deck as to impede the motions of each other, kept up an incessant fire of musketry, cutting the _Aspasia's_ running rigging, riddling her sails, and disabling her men. "Hard a-port now!" cried Pearce, and the vessels came in collision, the spare anchor in the _Aspasia's_ fore-chains catching and tearing away the backstays and lanyards of the enemy's fore-rigging, and, with a violent jerk, bringing down the fore-topmast to windward. At this moment the reserved broadside of the _Aspasia_ was discharged, and the two frigates heeled over opposite ways, from the violent concussion of the air in the confined space between them. While yet enveloped in the smoke, the men flew up on deck, as they had been previously directed by Captain M---, who leaped upon the quarter-deck hammocks of his own frigate, and, holding with one hand by the mizen-topmast backstay, with his sword in the other, waving to encourage his men, waited a second or two for the closing of the after-parts of the vessels, before he led on his boarders. The smoke rolled away through the masts of the French frigate, and discovered her captain, with equal disregard to his safety, in nearly a similar position on the hammock rails of his own vessel. The rival commanders were not six feet apart, when the main-chains of the two vessels crashed as they came in collision. The French captain drew a pistol from his belt and levelled it at Captain M---, whose fate appeared to be certain; when, at the critical moment, a hat, thrown from the quarter-deck of the _Aspasia_, right into the face of the Frenchman, blinded him for a minute, and his pistol went off without taking effect.