tted at
the same writing, "have been most amply supplied, and every attention
has been paid us." Years afterwards Nelson spoke feelingly of the
bitter mental anguish of that protracted and oft-thwarted pursuit. "Do
not fret at anything," he told his friend Troubridge; "I wish I never
had, but my return to Syracuse in 1798, broke my heart, which on any
extraordinary anxiety now shows itself, be that feeling pain or
pleasure." "On the 18th I had near died, with the swelling of some of
the vessels of the heart. More people, perhaps, die of broken hearts
than we are aware of." But the firmness of his purpose, the clearness
of his convictions, remained unslackened and unclouded. "What a
situation am I placed in!" he writes, when he finds Hamilton's
despatches returned. "As yet I can learn nothing of the enemy. You
will, I am sure, and so will our country, easily conceive what has
passed in my anxious mind; but I have this comfort, that I have no
fault to accuse myself of. This bears me up, and this only." "Every
moment I have to regret the frigates having left me," he tells St.
Vincent. "Your lordship deprived yourself of frigates to make mine
certainly the first squadron in the world, and I feel that I have zeal
and activity to do credit to your appointment, and yet to be
unsuccessful hurts me most sensibly. But if they are above water, I
will find them out, and if possible bring them to battle. You have
done your part in giving me so fine a fleet, and I hope to do mine in
making use of them."

In five days the squadron had filled with water and again sailed.
Satisfied that the enemy were somewhere in the Levant, Nelson now
intended a deliberate search for them--or rather for their fleet, the
destruction of which was the crucial object of all his movements. "It
has been said," he wrote to Hamilton, "that to leeward of the two
frigates I saw off Cape Passaro was a line-of-battle ship, with the
riches of Malta on board, but it was the destruction of the enemy, not
riches for myself, that I was seeking. These would have fallen to me
if I had had frigates, but except the ship-of-the-line, I regard not
all the riches in this world." A plaintive remonstrance against his
second departure was penned by the Neapolitan prime minister, which
depicts so plainly the commonplace view of a military situation,--the
apprehensions of one to whom immediate security is the great object in
war,--that it justifies quotation, and comparison with