The threatening aspect of affairs necessitated the “Boreas” being kept in commission,—­the more so because the economies introduced by Mr. Pitt into the administration of the two military services had reduced the available naval force below that which France could at once send out.  “The Boreas is kept in readiness to go to sea with the squadron at Spithead,” wrote Nelson; “but in my poor opinion we shall go no further at present.  The French have eight sail in Brest water ready for sea:  therefore I think we shall not court the French out of port,”—­singular illustration of the unreadiness of Great Britain in the years immediately preceding the French Revolution.  He looks for war, however, the following summer.  As not only ships, but men also, were urgently needed, the impress service was hastily organized.  His friend Locker was summoned from his long retirement to superintend that work in Exeter, and the “Boreas” was ordered to the Thames on the same business, arriving on the 20th of August at the Nore.  There her duty was to board passing vessels, and take from them as many of their crew as were above the number barely necessary for the safety of the ship.  She herself, besides acting as receiving ship for the men thus pressed, was to be kept in readiness to sail at a moment’s warning.  Mrs. Nelson had therefore to leave her and go to London.  “Here we are,” wrote Nelson on the 23d of September, “laying seven miles from the land on the Impress service, and I am as much separated from my wife as if I were in the East Indies;” and he closes the letter with the words, “I am this moment getting under sail after some ships.”

His early biographers say that Nelson keenly felt and resented the kind of service in which he was then engaged; so much so that, moved also by other causes of irritation, he decided at one time to quit the Navy.  No indication of such feeling, however, appears in his letters.  On the contrary, one of the surest signs with him of pleasurable, or at least of interested, excitement, was now manifested in his improving health.  As he himself said, many years later, “To say the truth, when I am actively employed I am not so bad."[17] A month after reaching England, though then midsummer, he wrote:  “It is not kind in one’s native air to treat a poor wanderer as it has me since my arrival.  The rain and cold at first gave me a sore throat and its accompaniments; the hot weather has given me a slow fever, not absolutely bad enough to keep my bed, yet enough to hinder me from doing anything;” and again, “I have scarcely been able to hold up my head.”  In blustering October, on the other hand, while in the midst of the detested Impress work, he says:  “My health, thank God, was never better, and I am fit for any quarter of the globe;” although “it rains hard, and we have had very bad weather of late.”  Whatever momentary vexation he may have vented in a hasty expression, it was entirely inconsistent with his general tone to take amiss an employment whose