"Monsieur La Touche came out with eight sail of the line and six frigates, cut a caper off Sepet, and went in again.

I brought-to for his attack, although I did not believe anything was meant serious, but merely a gasconade." "On the morning of the 15th," he tells Acton on the same day, "I believe I may call it, we chased him into Toulon." His purpose evidently was, as has been shown, to fight, if the enemy meant business, to leeward of the port, and far enough off to give Bickerton a chance to come up.

Great was his wrath, two months later, when Latouche's statement reached him, and he found that not only no mention was made of the relative numbers, but that the offensive expression quoted had been used.

"I do assure you," he wrote to the Admiralty, enclosing a copy of the day's log, "I know not what to say, except by a flat contradiction; for if my character is not established by this time for not being apt to run away, it is not worth my time to attempt to put the world right." He might well have rested there,--an imputation that might have injured an untried man could provoke only a smile when levelled at his impregnable renown; but his ruffled mind would not let him keep quiet, and in private correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen.

"You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me and how I _ran_.