Now Dicky could stand the Alceste's bad seamanship, but it didn't suit him to take the Alceste's snub, and then sit down and write to the Admiralty and complain about it. He had been used to teaching Frenchmen to behave themselves, and he meant to do so now. "Barham," said he to his first lieutenant, "the rascals don't mean to salute." "Report 'em to the Admiralty as soon as we come to anchor," responded Barham. "Wouldn't it be better to smash his cabin windows, and splinter one of his starboard boats beforehand--eh?" "Decidedly better," said Barham, whose blood was up too. "With such a lot of landsmen and marines as they've got aloft, it will go hard if the Hornet can't scrape some of the paint off his sides." By this time the French captain saw what was coming. The Hornet was standing up beautifully to the breeze, and apparently making straight for the Alceste. In two minutes more she was right on his starboard quarter, and the French sailors began to yell. Barham had taken the wheel, and kept his eye on Captain Carew, when, as Dicky waved his hand, Barham threw down the helm, and the little Hornet scraped so close to the Alceste that the quartermaster, taking up a boat-hook, jammed it through the Alceste's cabin windows, bawling: "Take that for yer manners, ye ornsightly lubbers!" And then there was a crash--a boat on the Alceste's starboard quarter was gone, and as the big frigate lurched across the yard of blue water between them, the little Hornet's stanch mizzen mast struck the Alceste's lower spars, that were only half secured, and tore through the rigging as if it were a cobweb. In another minute the Hornet with her helm righted had danced off, her men cheering and jeering, while the French captain fairly danced with rage, and shook his fist at Captain Carew, who raised his cap, and bowed and smiled politely. Of course it was very wrong, and Captain Carew knew it, particularly when he saw the Alceste deliberately put about to return to Portsmouth. Dicky began to have dreadful visions of being obliged to go on the Alceste in full uniform, and make an apology to the French captain, than which he would much rather have had an arm cut off.