The Argus met with but little success. The seamanship of her officers was, however, tested during the cruise. She was chased three days and nights by an English squadron, and yet not only managed to escape, but having come upon an English merchantman during the chase, actually captured it in sight of the fleet, though by the time she had manned it the enemy had opened on her with his guns. Having made five prizes in all, she returned to port. In the meanwhile the Wasp, Captain Jones, which was returning from Europe with dispatches, the time war was declared, had refitted and started on a cruise. Sailing northward to the latitude of Boston, she made a single capture and returned to the Delaware. On the 13th of October, the very day of Van Rensalaer's defeat at Queenstown, she again put to sea, and after being four days out, on the night of the 17th, made five strange sail. Not knowing their strength or character, Captain Jones deemed it prudent to keep off till daylight, when he would have a better opportunity for observing them. In the morning he discovered there were six ships under the convoy of a brig of war. Two of them were armed, but the brig deeming herself alone a match for the American, sent them all forward, and waited for the latter to approach. The sea was rough from the effects of a storm that had swept those latitudes the day before, in which Captain Jones had lost his jib boom and two of his crew. There was no manoeuvering attempted in this tumultuous sea, and the Wasp surged on in dead silence, the only sound heard on her decks being the roar of the waves as they burst along her sides. She closed on her antagonist with a deadliness of purpose seldom witnessed in naval combats. She never delivered her broadside till within a hundred and eighty feet, and then with fearful effect. At first this heroism seemed doomed to a poor reward. The fire of the Frolic was incessant. Seldom had an Englishman been known to deliver such rapid broadsides. In five minutes the main topmast of the Wasp fell amid the rigging--in two minutes more the gaft and mizen top-gallant mast followed. Thus, in eight minutes from the time the vessels closed, the Wasp was so disabled that her destruction seemed almost certain. But while cut up herself so terribly aloft, she had struck with every broadside the heart of her antagonist. As she rolled on the heavy seas her guns were frequently under water, and the sailors staggered around their pieces like drunken men. Delivering her broadsides as she sunk, she hulled her antagonist at every discharge; while the latter, firing as she rose, made sad work with the rigging of the former. Jones seeing his spars and rigging so dreadfully cut up, was afraid that his vessel would become unmanageable, and therefore determined to run foul of his adversary and board. But when the vessels closed, the bows of the Frolic struck abaft the midships of the Wasp, which so swung the head of the latter around that she was