In military enterprises there will frequently arise the question, Is time or life in this case of the greater value?  Those regularly ordered and careful procedures which most economize the blood of the soldier may, by their inevitable delays, seriously imperil the objects of the campaign as a whole; or they may even, while less sanguinary, entail indirectly a greater loss of men than do prompter measures.  In such doubtful matters Nelson’s judgment was usually sound; and his instinct, which ever inclined to instant and vigorous action, was commonly by itself alone an accurate guide, in a profession whose prizes are bestowed upon quick resolve more often than upon deliberate consultation.  The same intuition that in his prime dictated his instant, unhesitating onslaught at the Nile, depriving the French of all opportunity for further preparation,—­that caused him in the maturity of his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, “every hour’s delay makes the enemy stronger; we shall never be so good a match for them as at this moment,”—­that induced him at Trafalgar to modify his deliberately prepared plan in favor of one vastly more hazardous, but which seized and held the otherwise fleeting chance,—­led him here also at San Juan, unknown, and scarcely more than a boy, to press the policy of immediate attack.

The decision was not in his hands, and he was overruled; whereupon, with his usual readiness to do his utmost, he accepted the course he disapproved, and, without nursing a grievance, became at once active in erecting batteries and serving the guns.  “When unfortunate contentions,” says one dispassionate narrator, “had slackened the ardour for public service, Captain Nelson did not suffer any narrow spirit to influence his conduct.  He did more than his duty:  where anything was to be done, he saw no difficulties.”  Great as his merits were, he was never insensible to them; and, in the sketch of his career, furnished by him to his chief biographers, he records his exploits with naive self-satisfaction, resembling the sententious tablets of Eastern conquerors:  “I boarded, if I may be allowed the expression, an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; I made batteries, and afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success.”  But this simple, almost childlike, delight in his own performances, which continually crops out in his correspondence, did not exaggerate their deserts.  Major Polson, commanding the land forces, wrote to Governor Dalling:  “I want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain Nelson.  He was the first on every service, whether by day or night.  There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer.”  Dalling, after some delay, wrote in the same sense to the Minister of War in London, warmly recommending Nelson to the notice of the home Government.