it was not until the battle of St. Vincent that he began to attract attention.  He had been promoted Rear-Admiral before the news of the battle was known, and when the news reached England the public enthusiasm was irrepressible.  Jervis was made an Earl, with L3,000 a year pension, and the King requested that he should take his title from the name of the battle.  Nelson refused a baronetcy, and was made, at his own request, a Knight of the Bath, receiving the thanks of the City of London and a sword.  All those who were in prominent positions or came to the front in this conflict received something.  It was not by a freak of chance that the authorities began to see in Nelson the elements of an extraordinary man.  Nor was it mere chance that they so far neglected him that he was obliged to force himself upon the Admiralty in order to get them to employ him.  The nation was in need of a great spirit, and Providence had been preparing one for many years before the ruling authorities discovered that Nelson was their man of the future.

For several months he was tearing about the seas in search of the French fleet.  He popped into Naples on the 17th June, 1798, ostensibly to know if anything had been heard of it, and no doubt he took the opportunity of having a word with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, who were to come so romantically into his life.  He found the French fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay and sailed upon it with such amazing audacity that the heart was knocked out of them at the very outset.  Neither the French Admiral nor anybody else would have expected the British fleet to run their ships between them and the shore at the risk of grounding.  The Culloden did ground.  The French had 11 out of 13 ships put out of action, but the British fleet suffered severely also, and the loss of men was serious.[1] Out of a total of 7,401 men, 218 were killed and 678 wounded.  Nelson himself was badly wounded on the forehead, and as the skin fell down on his good eye and the blood streamed into it, he was both dazed and blinded.  He shouted to Captain Berry as he was staggering to a fall, “I am killed; remember me to my wife.”  But there was a lot more work for him to do before the fatal day.  He was carried below, believing the injury would prove fatal, in spite of the assurances to the contrary of the surgeon who was in attendance.

Although Nelson’s courage can never be doubted, there is something very curious in his constant, eccentric foreboding of death and the way in which he scattered his messages about to one and another.  This habit increased amazingly after his conflict with the French at the Nile.  He seems to have had intermittent attacks of hypochondria.  The wound incident at Aboukir must have given great amusement as well as anxiety to those about him.  Unquestionably the wound had the appearance at first of being mortal, but the surgeon soon gave a reassuring opinion, and after binding up the ugly cut he requested his patient