defence for his Sicilian Majesty’s dominions is to place myself alongside the French.”  “My situation is a cruel one,” he wrote to Hamilton, “and I am sure Lord Keith has lowered me in the eyes of Europe, for they will only know of 18 sail, [Ball having joined], and not of the description of them; it has truly made me ill.”  But, although not justified in seeking them, he had off Maritimo taken a strategic position which would enable him to intercept their approach to either Naples or Sicily, “and I was firmly resolved,” he wrote with another of his clear intuitions, “they should not pass me without a battle, which would so cripple them that they might be unable to proceed on any distant service.”  “On this you may depend,” he had written to Lady Hamilton, on the first cruise off Maritimo, three weeks before, “that if my little squadron obeys my signal, not a ship shall fall into the hands of the enemy; and I will so cut them up, that they will not be fit even for a summer’s cruise.”

On the 20th of June, off Maritimo, he received a despatch from St. Vincent that a reinforcement of twelve ships-of-the-line from the Channel was then approaching Port Mahon, and that Keith, having returned thither, had left again in search of Bruix, whose whereabouts remained unknown.  He was also notified that St. Vincent had resigned all his command, leaving Keith commander-in-chief.  Nelson was convinced—­“I knew,” was his expression—­that the French intended going to Naples.  He determined now to resume his enterprise against the republicans in the city; a decision which caused him great and unexplained mental conflict.  “I am agitated,” he wrote Hamilton the same day, in a note headed “Most Secret,” “but my resolution is fixed.  For Heaven’s sake suffer not any one to oppose it.  I shall not be gone eight days.  No harm can come to Sicily.  I send my Lady and you Lord St. Vincent’s letter.  I am full of grief and anxiety.  I must go.  It will finish the war.  It will give a sprig of laurel to your affectionate friend, Nelson.”  The cause of this distress can only be surmised, but is probably to be found in the fears of the Queen, and in the differences existing at the time between herself and the King.  Possibly, too, Lady Hamilton’s sympathy with the Queen, in a present fear for Sicily, may have led her, contrary to the request so lately made for the admiral to go to Naples, to second an entreaty that the island should not now be exposed; and to refuse her may have caused him pain.  On the 21st he was at Palermo, and after two hours’ consultation with their Majesties and Acton, the Prime Minister, he sailed again, accompanied in the “Foudroyant” on this occasion by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, but not by the Hereditary Prince, nor the Sicilian troops.  On the 24th, at 9 P.M., he anchored in the Bay of Naples.  Flags of truce were at that moment flying on the castles of Uovo and Nuovo, which were in the hands of the Neapolitan republicans, and upon the frigate “Seahorse,” whose commander had been the senior British officer present, before Nelson’s own appearance.