ry part of Captain ----'s
conduct on the above occasion," he writes to the Admiralty in such a
case.

The supplying of convoys, therefore, was ceaseless, for the
depredations of the marauders were unending. "I am pulled to pieces by
the demands of merchants for convoys," Nelson said; and he recognized
that it must be so, for he entirely disapproved of even a fast-sailing
vessel attempting to make a passage unprotected. "I wrote to the
Admiralty for more cruisers until I was tired," he told Ball, "and
they left off answering those parts of my letters. The late Admiralty
thought I kept too many to the eastward of Sicily; the Smyrna folks
complain of me, so do the Adriatic, so they do between Cape de Gatte
and Gibraltar. If I had the vessels, I do assure you not one of them
should go prize-hunting: that I never have done, I am a poorer man
than the day I was ordered to the Mediterranean command, by upwards of
L1,000; but money I despise except as it is useful, and I expect my
prize money is embarked in the Toulon fleet." "I am distressed for
frigates," was his continual cry. "From Cape St. Vincent to the head
of the Adriatic I have only eight; which, with the service of watching
Toulon, and the necessary frigates with the fleet, are absolutely not
one half enough." For military duties, "frigates are the eyes of a
fleet. I want ten more than I have in order to watch that the French
should not escape me, and ten sloops besides, to do all duties." For
nine stations which ought to be filled, "I have but two frigates;
therefore, my dear Ball, have a little mercy, and do not think I have
neglected the protection of the trade of Malta." This was written soon
after joining the station, and he represents the number as diminishing
as time passed. "It is shameful!" he cries in a moment of intense
anxiety.

In this fewness of cruisers he was forced to keep his vessels
constantly on the go,--to the Levant, to the Adriatic, to Sicily, to
Italy,--scouring the coasts for privateers, gathering merchant ships
by driblets, picking up information, and at the end of the round
returning to Malta with their fractions of the large convoy. When this
was assembled, a frigate or a ship-of-the-line, with one or two
smaller ships of war, sailed with it for Gibraltar at a date fixed,
approximately, months before. Meanwhile, at the latter place a similar
process of collection had been going on from the ports of the western
Mediterranean, and, after t