sure Lord
Keith has lowered me in the eyes of Europe, for they will only know of
18 sail, [Ball having joined], and not of the description of them; it
has truly made me ill." But, although not justified in seeking them,
he had off Maritimo taken a strategic position which would enable him
to intercept their approach to either Naples or Sicily, "and I was
firmly resolved," he wrote with another of his clear intuitions, "they
should not pass me without a battle, which would so cripple them that
they might be unable to proceed on any distant service." "On this you
may depend," he had written to Lady Hamilton, on the first cruise off
Maritimo, three weeks before, "that if my little squadron obeys my
signal, not a ship shall fall into the hands of the enemy; and I will
so cut them up, that they will not be fit even for a summer's cruise."

On the 20th of June, off Maritimo, he received a despatch from St.
Vincent that a reinforcement of twelve ships-of-the-line from the
Channel was then approaching Port Mahon, and that Keith, having
returned thither, had left again in search of Bruix, whose
whereabouts remained unknown. He was also notified that St. Vincent
had resigned all his command, leaving Keith commander-in-chief. Nelson
was convinced--"I knew," was his expression--that the French intended
going to Naples. He determined now to resume his enterprise against
the republicans in the city; a decision which caused him great and
unexplained mental conflict. "I am agitated," he wrote Hamilton the
same day, in a note headed "Most Secret," "but my resolution is fixed.
For Heaven's sake suffer not any one to oppose it. I shall not be gone
eight days. No harm can come to Sicily. I send my Lady and you Lord
St. Vincent's letter. I am full of grief and anxiety. I must go. It
will finish the war. It will give a sprig of laurel to your
affectionate friend, Nelson." The cause of this distress can only be
surmised, but is probably to be found in the fears of the Queen, and
in the differences existing at the time between herself and the King.
Possibly, too, Lady Hamilton's sympathy with the Queen, in a present
fear for Sicily, may have led her, contrary to the request so lately
made for the admiral to go to Naples, to second an entreaty that the
island should not now be exposed; and to refuse her may have caused
him pain. On the 21st he was at Palermo, and after two hours'
consultation with their Majesties and Acton, the Prime Minister,