amonds, said to have been sent me by the mother of the Grand Signor,
which I request she will accept (and never part from) as token of
regard and respect for her very eminent virtues (for she, the said
Emma Hamilton, possesses them all to such a degree that it would be
doing her injustice was any particular one to be mentioned) from her
faithful and affectionate friend." During this short cruise he wrote
her almost daily, and at some length, in addition to the more official
communications addressed to Hamilton. At this same period he was
excusing himself to his wife for the shortness and infrequency of his
letters: "Pray attribute it to the true cause--viz., that in truth my
poor hand cannot execute what my head tells me I ought to do."

On the 28th of May Nelson received letters from St. Vincent, dated the
21st, off Minorca, which put him in possession of the movements of the
enemy up to that date. The French fleet, under the command of Admiral
Bruix, had appeared on the 4th of the month off Cadiz. It was then
blowing a half-gale of wind, and the French admiral did not care,
under that condition, to engage the fifteen British ships-of-the-line
which were cruising off the harbor, under Lord Keith, who had come out
from England the previous autumn to be St. Vincent's second in
command. The intended junction with the Spanish squadron in Cadiz
being thus thwarted, Bruix passed the Straits on the 5th, and Lord St.
Vincent, having recalled Keith, followed on the 12th with sixteen
ships. On the 20th he joined Duckworth, and learned that the enemy,
when last seen, were heading for Toulon. Keith's removal had uncovered
Cadiz, and St. Vincent fully expected that the Spanish fleet would
leave there for the Mediterranean, which it did, and on the 20th
entered Cartagena, to the number of seventeen of the line, but much
crippled from a stormy passage. This Nelson did not yet know, nor that
Bruix had reached Toulon on the 14th of May, and sailed again on the
26th for the eastward.

Satisfied that the enemy would not at once come his way, and knowing
that a vessel had passed up the Mediterranean from St. Vincent to put
Sidney Smith on his guard, Nelson ordered Ball to resume the blockade
of Malta with two ships-of-the-line. The rest of his squadron he kept
massed, and took to Palermo, where he arrived May 29th. Lookout ships
were stationed off the north end of Corsica and west of Sardinia. "My
reason for remaining in Sicily," he wrot