was thus intrusted with a command, which in the conduct of details, great and small, and in emergencies, was practically independent.  Jervis, knowing his man, was content to have it so, reserving of course to himself the decision of the broad outlines of military exertion.  The inshore squadron was gradually increased till it numbered ten sail-of-the-line.  The boats of the fleet, which had been rowing guard off the harbor’s mouth under the general supervision of the two senior flag-officers, were ordered, shortly after Nelson’s arrival, to report to him; and upon him, indeed, devolved pretty nearly all the active enterprises of the fleet.  It was his practice to visit the line of boats every night in his barge, to see by personal inspection of these outposts that his instructions were fully observed.  “Our inferiority,” he wrote about this time, “is greater than before.  I am barely out of shot of a Spanish rear-admiral.  The Dons hope for peace, but must soon fight us, if the war goes on.”

Another motive, perhaps even more imperative than the wish to force the Dons out, now compelled Jervis to seek by all means to increase the activity of his fleet, and to intrust the management of such activities to his most zealous and capable subordinate.  These were the months of the great mutinies of the British Navy, in which the seamen of the Channel fleet, and of the North Sea fleet, at the Nore, had taken the ships out of the hands of their officers.  The details of Jervis’s management, which was distinguished as much by keen judgment and foresight as by iron-handed severity, that knew neither fear nor ruth when it struck, belong to his biography, not to Nelson’s; but it is necessary to note the attitude of the latter, a man more sympathetic, and in common life gentler, than his stern superior.  Always solicitous for everything that increased the well-being and happiness of his crew,—­as indeed was eminently the case with Jervis also,—­he did not withhold his candid sympathy from the grievances alleged by the Channel fleet; grievances which, when temperately presented to the authorities, had been ignored.  “I am entirely with the seamen in their first complaint.  We are a neglected set, and, when peace comes, are shamefully treated; but for the Nore scoundrels,” passing on to those who had rebelled after substantial redress had been given, and had made unreasonable demands when the nation was in deadly peril, “I should be happy to command a ship against them.”  Jervis’s measures received full support from him, clear-headed as ever to see the essentials of a situation.  The senior vice-admiral, for instance, went so far as to criticise the commander-in-chief for hanging a convicted mutineer on Sunday.  “Had it been Christmas Day instead of Sunday,” wrote Nelson, “I would have executed them.  We know not what might have been hatched by a Sunday’s grog:  now your discipline is safe.”  His glorious reputation and his known kindly character, supported by that of his captain, made mutiny impossible under his flag.  It had not been up a month on board the “Theseus,” which was lately from the Channel and infected with the prevalent insubordination, when a paper was dropped on the quarter-deck, expressing the devotion of the ship’s company to their commander, and pledging that the name of the “Theseus” should yet be as renowned as that of the “Captain.”