diamonds; it has done him honour and me a
pleasure to have my conduct approved;" "but," he tells Ball,
significantly, "this shall not prevent my keeping a sharp lookout on
his movements against the good Turk." As regards Paul I., ferocious
and half crazy as he was, this imputation of merely interested
foresight scarcely did justice to the quixotic passions which often
impelled him to the most unselfish acts, but the general tendency was
undeniable; and Nelson's watchful attitude exemplifies the numerous
diplomatic, as well as military, responsibilities that weighed upon
him. He was, practically, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean,
even if Government refused to recognize the fact by reward, or by
proper staff appointments; for St. Vincent, autocratic as he was
towards others, could roll off upon Nelson all his responsibilities
there,--"the uncontrolled direction of the naval part," were his own
words,--and sleep quietly. Despite his objections to the island
itself, and his enthusiastic fidelity to the Neapolitan royal house,
Nelson had evidently the presentiment that Malta must come to Great
Britain, a solution which Ball and the Maltese themselves were urging
upon him. "A Neapolitan garrison would betray it to the first man who
would bribe him," he wrote; which, if true, left to Great Britain no
other alternative than to take it herself. Neither he, Troubridge, nor
the sovereigns, had confidence in the fidelity of Neapolitan officers.

The blockade of Malta was maintained with great tenacity, and,
coupled with the maritime prostration of France in the Mediterranean,
resulted in a complete isolation of the French garrison in La Valetta
by sea, the Maltese people hemming it in by land. By the 1st of May
Ball had erected a battery at the head of the harbor, sweeping it to
the entrance, so that the French ships, one of which was the
"Guillaume Tell," eighty, that had escaped from Aboukir, had to be
kept in the coves. These affairs of Malta brought Nelson into
difficult diplomatic relations with the Barbary States, Tunis and
Tripoli. The island not affording sufficient food, strenuous efforts
had to be made by him and Ball to get grain from Sicily and elsewhere,
a matter very difficult of accomplishment even were the transit
unmolested; but these petty Mussulman states, for the purposes of
piracy, kept themselves in formal war with Naples and Portugal, and
frequently captured vessels under the Sicilian flag carrying co