Nelson was now persuaded to go to bed, but he neither got nor sought repose of mind.  Throughout the night, and in the early morning, messages went from him to various ships to take this or that step, to garner in the fruits of the victory yet unculled.  The fleet responded somewhat spasmodically, if not inadequately, to these calls.  Men in truth were worn out with labor and excitement.  “My people were so extremely jaded,” wrote Captain Miller of the “Theseus,” who obeyed a summons to move, “that as soon as they had hove our sheet anchor up they dropped under the capstan bars, and were asleep in a moment in every sort of posture, having been then working at their fullest exertion, or fighting, for near twelve hours.”  Nelson, in common with other great leaders, could not be satisfied with any but the utmost results.  To quote again his words of years gone by:  “Had ten ships been taken and the eleventh escaped, we being able to get at her, I should never consider it well done.”  His idea, Captain Berry tells us, was first to secure the victory, and then to make the most of it, as circumstances might permit.  The expression is so luminous that it can scarcely be doubted that the words are substantially those of the admiral himself.[65] First, the great combination, which necessarily for the moment neglects a part of the enemy in order to disconcert and overwhelm the rest; afterwards, the unremitting pursuit, which completes the triumph.

It was therefore perfectly characteristic of Nelson’s habit of thought, and not merely an egotistic expression of baseless discontent with others, that he avowed his dissatisfaction with the results of the night’s work, stupendous and wholly unparalleled as they were.  But his own condition, prostrated and with disabled head, was doubly typical of the state of his fleet after the “Orient” blew up.  Not only were men overcome with fatigue,—­from weariness as great men have been aroused by the inspiring call of a trusted chief,—­but the guiding head of the body was dazed and incapacitated; that was gone which alone could sustain energy and give unity to movement.  Although Nelson indulged in no metaphorical allusions, he had this figure of the head clearly enough in his mind, when he wrote four weeks later to Lord Minto:  “I regret that one escaped, and I think, if it had pleased God that I had not been wounded, not a boat would have escaped to have told the tale; but do not believe that any individual in the fleet is to blame.  In my conscience, I believe greater exertions could not have been, and I only mean to say, that if my experience could in person have directed[66] those exertions of individuals, there was every appearance that Almighty God would have continued to bless my endeavours.”  This opinion he reiterated to Lord Howe, even more positively, after four months’ longer reflection, in a letter dated January 8, 1799; and, whether the result would or would not have equalled his belief,