With his mind ever fixed upon glory, or rather upon honor,—­the word he himself most often used, and which more accurately expresses his desire for fame; honor, which is to glory what character is to reputation,—­the same hard fortune persisted in denying to him, during the War of the American Revolution, the opportunities for distinction which he so ardently coveted.  In the “Badger” and in the “Hinchinbrook,” during the year 1779, his service was confined to routine cruising about Jamaica and along the Mosquito coast of Central America.  A gleam of better things for a moment shone upon him in August of that year, when the French fleet, under Count D’Estaing, appeared in Haiti, numbering twenty-two ships-of-the-line, with transports reported to be carrying twenty thousand troops.  All Jamaica was in an uproar of apprehension, believing an attack upon the island to be imminent; for its conquest was known to be one of the great objects of the enemy.  Nelson was at the time living on shore, the “Hinchinbrook” seemingly[4] not having returned to the port since his appointment to her, and he eagerly accepted the duty of commanding the land batteries.  The odds were great,—­“You must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak French,” he wrote, laughingly, to Locker in England,—­but if so, the greater the honor attendant, whether upon success or defeat.  D’Estaing, however, passed on to America to encounter disaster at Savannah, and Nelson’s hopes were again disappointed.

In January, 1780, an opportunity for service offered, which ended in no conspicuous or permanent result, but nevertheless conferred distinction upon one who, to use his own expression, was determined to climb to the top of the tree, and to neglect no chance, however slight, that could help him on.  War with Spain had then been about seven months declared, and the British governor of Jamaica had sagaciously determined to master Lake Nicaragua, and the course of the river San Juan, its outlet to the Caribbean Sea.  The object of the attempt was twofold, both military and commercial.  The route was recognized then, as it is now, as one of the most important, if not the most important, of those affording easy transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the Isthmus.  To a nation of the mercantile aptitudes of Great Britain, such a natural highway was necessarily an object of desire.  In her hands it would not only draw to itself the wealth of the surrounding regions, but would likewise promote the development of her trade, both north and south, along the eastern and western coasts of the two Americas.  But the pecuniary gain was not all.  The military tenure of this short and narrow strip, supported at either end, upon the Pacific and the Atlantic, by naval detachments, all the more easily to be maintained there by the use of the belt itself, would effectually sever the northern and southern colonies of Spain, both by actual interposition, and by depriving them of one of their most vital lines of intercommunication.  To seek control of so valuable and central a link in a great network of maritime interests was as natural and inevitable to Great Britain a century ago, as it now is to try to dominate the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, which fulfil a like function to her Eastern possessions and Eastern commerce.