: "Truly, till last
Monday, I have suffered so much, I hope for your forgiveness. I am now
perfectly recovered, and on the eve of being employed." On Friday, the
8th, he wrote to Captain Berry, who had led the boarders to the "San
Nicolas" at Cape St. Vincent, and was designated to command the ship
in which the admiral's flag should next be hoisted, saying that he was
well; and the same day, with that profound recognition of a personal
Providence which was with him as instinctive as his courage, he sent
to a London clergyman the following request: "An officer desires to
return thanks to Almighty God for his perfect recovery from a severe
wound, and also for the many mercies bestowed upon him. (For next
Sunday.)"

As the close attention of the skilled surgeons in whose hands he had
been was now no longer needed, he returned to Bath to await the time
when his flagship should be completely equipped. St. Vincent had asked
that the "Foudroyant," of eighty guns, should be prepared for him;
but, after his sudden recovery, as she was not yet ready, there was
substituted for her the "Vanguard," seventy-four, which was
commissioned by Berry at Chatham on the 19th of December. In March she
had reached Portsmouth, and Nelson then went up to London, where he
attended a levee on the 14th of the month and took leave of the King.
On the 29th his flag was hoisted, and on the 10th of April, after a
week's detention at St. Helen's by head winds, he sailed for Lisbon.
There he remained for four days, and on the 30th of the month, off
Cadiz, rejoined St. Vincent, by whom he was received with open arms.
The veteran seaman, stern and resolved as was his bearing in the face
of danger, was unhopeful about the results of the war, which from the
first he had not favored, and for whose ending he was eager. Now, at
sixty-four, his health was failing, and the difficulties and dangers
of the British cause in the Mediterranean weighed upon him, with a
discouragement very alien from the sanguine joy with which his ardent
junior looked forward to coming battles. His request to be relieved
from command, on the score of ill health, was already on file at the
Admiralty. "I do assure your Lordship," he wrote to Earl Spencer,
"that the arrival of Admiral Nelson has given me new life; you could
not have gratified me more than in sending him; his presence in the
Mediterranean is so very essential, that I mean to put the "Orion" and
"Alexander" under his comma