t has forced me to anchor here, in order to prevent being drove to
leeward, but I shall go to sea the moment it moderates." Palmas is
only forty miles to windward of Pula, but it was not till the 8th of
March, after three or four ineffectual efforts, that the squadron got
there. "From the 19th of February to this day," wrote Nelson to Ball,
"have we been beating, and only now going to anchor here as it blows a
gale of wind at northwest. It has been without exception, the very
worst weather I have ever seen." Bad as it was, it was but a sample of
that he was to meet a month later, in the most wearing episode of his
anxious life.

Besides the weary struggle with foul winds and weather, other great
disappointments and vexations met Nelson at Palmas. During his absence
to the eastward, one despatch vessel had been wrecked off Cadiz and
fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, another had been intercepted
by the battered French fleet as it approached Toulon, and a convoy,
homeward-bound from Malta, had been waylaid, the two small ships of
war which formed the escort had been taken, and the merchant ships
dispersed. This last misfortune he ascribed unhesitatingly to the
division of the command. "It would not have happened, could I have
ordered the officer off Cadiz to send ships to protect them." The
incident was not without its compensations to one who valued honor
above loss, for his two petty cruisers had honored themselves and him
by such a desperate resistance, before surrendering to superior force,
that the convoy had time to scatter, and most of it escaped. There was
reason to fear that the despatch vessel taken off Toulon had mistaken
the French fleet for the British, which it had expected to find
outside, and that her commander might have had to haul down his flag
before getting opportunity to throw the mail-bags overboard. In that
case, both public and private letters had gone into the enemy's
possession. "I do assure you, my dearest Emma," he wrote Lady
Hamilton, "that nothing can be more miserable, or unhappy, than your
poor Nelson." Besides the failure to find the French, "You will
conceive my disappointment! It is now[88] from November 2nd that I
have had a line from England."

A characteristic letter was elicited from Nelson by the loss of the
despatch-vessel off Cadiz, the brig "Raven," whose commander, Captain
Layman, had gained his cordial professional esteem in the Copenhagen
expedition, in connection with