The first lieutenant went down on the main-deck and personally repeated the Captain's instructions; and before he returned to the quarter-deck the first of our long 24-pounders spoke its message, the shot passing through the stranger's foresail and narrowly missing the mast.  Then our 8-pounders got to work, and very soon we saw loose ropes'-ends streaming out on board her, showing that our fire had not been wholly in vain, although, so far, no damage worth speaking of had been done.  Nor were the Frenchmen idle; on the contrary, they fired about four guns to every one of ours, but after that first shot of theirs they appeared to have become flurried and excited, and their aim correspondingly wild; at all events, although some of their shot came near us, while one or two actually flew over us, not one of them came near enough to do us a ropeyarn's worth of damage.