The _Hornet_, as the _Penguin_ approached, kept wearing first one way and then the other to keep from getting raked until 1.40 P.M., when the _Penguin_ had arrived within musket-shot. At that the _Penguin_ hauled to the wind with the breeze coming in over her starboard bow, when she “hoisted her colors and fired a gun; whereupon the _Hornet_ hauled up on the starboard tack and discharged a broadside.” The quotation is from Allen. It is a small matter, but the first gun of this “action of a disgraceful character to the Americans” was fired by the British. The battle that followed was another remarkable exhibit of the superiority of the Yankee gunners. For ten minutes they hurled bar-shot and other missiles at the rigging of the ill-fated _Penguin_. “In a very short time” these projectiles “had done their work.” And then the Yankee gunners began to load with solid shot, loading swiftly as the gunners had done in the _Hornet’s_ action with the British _Peacock_, but aiming with deliberation. And so, “notwithstanding a heavy swell prevailed,” every broadside “was taking effect.” The quotations are from Allen. “Taking effect” expressed the result of the Yankee fire but mildly. Captain Dickenson, of the _Penguin_, described the work much more forcibly. He said to First Lieutenant McDonald: “The fellows are giving it to us like hell.” They had thought to encounter one of the sea-militia, but they found a well-trained Yankee man-of-war crew instead. The _Penguin_ having the weather-gage, in spite of her crippled rigging, was steadily drawing down on the Yankee. It was plain that the British gunners were no match for the Yankees, and Captain Dickenson determined to try boarding. Putting up his helm he sent his ship straight at the _Hornet_. Just then a bullet stretched him dead on the deck, but First Lieutenant James McDonald took his place and bravely called on the men to follow him. The British bow came crashing against the _Hornet’s_ side just abaft the main rigging. The Yankees flocked to the quarter-deck to repel boarders. The blunt cutwater of the British bow sawed up and down on the black waist of the _Hornet_, rasping the thick planks as if to break them in; but the boarders never came over to the bow. “We tried,” said McDonald, afterward, “but found the men rather backward--and so, you know, we concluded to give it up.” The Yankee crew wanted, then, to board the _Penguin_ but Captain Biddle stopped them, because it was “evident from the beginning that our fire was greatly superior both in quickness and effect.” [Illustration: The _Hornet_ and _Penguin_. _From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”_]