public in such a thing, I cannot help it."

While he was on this station, the weather had been so unusually severe
that he said the Mediterranean seemed altered. It was his rule never to
contend with the gales; but either run to the southward to escape their
violence, or furl all the sails, and make the ships as easy as possible.
The men, though he said flesh and blood could hardly stand it, continued
in excellent health, which he ascribed, in great measure, to a plentiful
supply of lemons and onions. For himself, he thought he could only last
till the battle was over. One battle more it was his hope that he might
fight. "However," said he, "whatever happens, I have run a glorious
race." "A few months rest," he says, "I must have very soon. If I am in
my grave, what are the mines of Peru to me? But to say the truth, I have
no idea of killing myself. I may, with care, live yet to do good service
to the state. My cough is very bad, and my side, where I was struck on
the 14th of February, is very much swelled: at times a lump as large
as my fist, brought on occasionally by violent coughing. But I hope and
believe my lungs are yet safe." He was afraid of blindness and this was
the only evil which he could not contemplate without unhappiness. More
alarming symptoms he regarded with less apprehension, describing his own
"shattered carcass" as in the worst plight of any in the fleet; and he
says, "I have felt the blood gushing up the left side of my head; and,
the moment it covers the brain, I am fast asleep." The fleet was in
worse trim than the men; but when he compared it with the enemy's, it
was with a right English feeling. "The French fleet yesterday," said he,
in one of his letters, "was to appearance in high feather, and as fine
as paint could make them; but when they may sail, or where they may
go, I am very sorry to say is a secret I am not acquainted with. Our
weather-beaten ships, I have no fear, will make their sides like
a plum-pudding." "Yesterday," he says, on another occasion, "a
rear-admiral and seven sail of ships put their nose outside the harbour.
If they go on playing this game, some day we shall lay salt on their
tails."

Hostilities at length commenced between Great Britain and Spain. That
country, whose miserable government made her subservient to France, was
once more destined to lavish her resources and her blood in furtherance
of the designs of a perfidious ally. The immediate occasion of the
war