every shot told.
For ten minutes this position was held, and the two crews worked like
Furies in loading and firing the great guns. The roar of the cannon
was incessant, and the recoil of the heavy explosions deadened what
little way the ships had on when fire was opened. Capt. Manners was
too old an officer not to know, that, in an artillery duel of that
kind, the victory would surely rest with the side that carried the
heaviest guns: so he ran his vessel aboard the "Wasp" on the starboard
quarter, intending to board and carry the day with the stubborn,
dashing gallantry shown by British seamen when once led to an enemy's
deck. At the ringing notes of the bugle, calling up the boarders, the
British gathered aft, their faces begrimed with gunpowder, their arms
bare, and their keen cutlasses firmly clutched in their strong right
hands. The Americans took the alarm at once, and crowded forward to
repel the enemy. The marines, whose hard duty it is in long-range
fighting to stand with military impassiveness, drawn up in line on
deck, while the shot whistle by them, and now and then cut great gaps
in their straight lines,--the marines came aft, with their muskets
loaded and bayonets fixed. Before them were sailors with sharp-pointed
boarding-pikes, ready to receive the enemy should he come aboard;
while close under the bulwarks were grouped the boarders, ready with
cutlass and pistol to beat back the flood of men that should come
pouring over the side. The grating of the ships' sides told that the
vessels were touching; and the next instant the burly British seamen,
looming up like giants, as they dashed through the dense murkiness of
the powder-smoke, were among the Americans, cutting and firing right
and left. From the deck of the "Reindeer" the marines kept up a
constant fire of musketry, to which the sea-soldiers of the "Wasp"
responded vigorously. Marksmen posted in the tops of each vessel
picked off men from their enemy's decks, choosing generally the
officers.

[Illustration: The Captain of the "Reindeer."]

Sharp and bloody though the British attack was, the boarders could
make no way against the stubborn stand of the Americans. Capt.
Manners, seeing his men beaten back, sprang forward to rally them. He
was desperately wounded. A gun-shot had passed through his thighs, and
a grape-shot had cut across the calves of his legs; but, maimed and
bleeding to death as he was, he leaped into the rigging, and, cheering
an