o--an echo of the
increasing scandal that attended it.

On the 10th of March he left Malta for Palermo in the "Foudroyant,"
sending the ship back, however, to take her place in the blockade, and
hoisting his own flag on board a transport. His mind was now rapidly
turning towards a final retirement from the station, a decision which
was accelerated by the capture of the "Guillaume Tell." This
eighty-gun ship started on the night of March 29th to run out from La
Valetta, to relieve the famished garrison from feeding the twelve
hundred men she carried. Fortunately, the "Foudroyant" had resumed her
station off the island; and it was a singular illustration of the good
fortune of the "heaven-born" admiral, to repeat Ball's expression,
that she arrived barely in time, only a few hours before the event,
her absence from which might have resulted in the escape of the enemy,
and a just censure upon Nelson. The French ship was sighted first by a
frigate, the "Penelope," Captain Blackwood, which hung gallantly upon
her quarters, as Nelson in former days had dogged the "Ca Ira" with
the "Agamemnon," until the heavier ships could gather round the
quarry. The "Guillaume Tell," necessarily intent only on escape from
overpowering numbers, could not turn aside to crush the small
antagonist, which one of her broadsides might have swept out of
existence; yet even so, the frigate decided the issue, for she shot
away the main and mizzen topmasts of the French vessel, permitting the
remainder of the British to come up. No ship was ever more gallantly
fought than the "Guillaume Tell;" the scene would have been well
worthy even of Nelson's presence. More could not be said, but Nelson
was not there. She had shaken off the "Penelope" and the "Lion,"
sixty-four, when the "Foudroyant" drew up at six in the morning. "At
half-past six," says the latter's log, "shot away the [French] main
and mizen-masts: saw a man nail the French ensign to the stump of the
mizen-mast. Five minutes past eight, shot away the enemy's foremast.
Ten minutes past eight, all her masts being gone by the board, the
enemy struck his colours, and ceased firing." The last of the fleet in
Aboukir Bay had surrendered to Nelson's ship, but not to Nelson's
flag.

"I am sensible," he wrote from Palermo to Sir Edward Berry, the
captain of the "Foudroyant," "of your kindness in wishing my presence
at the finish of the Egyptian fleet, but I have no cause for sorrow.
The thing could