Excellency’s command, or detach one ship down the Mediterranean, until further orders from me for that purpose.”  Your orders, he tells Niza in a private letter, were founded upon the belief that your presence was no longer necessary; “but the contrary is the fact—­for your services were never more wanted than at this moment, when every exertion is wanting to get more troops of English and Russians to Malta.”  He is evidently thinking of his difference with Keith; but now he is within the limits of his commission as Commander-in-chief.  Doubting, however, whether his official authority will prevail with Niza to disobey his recall, he plies him skilfully with appeals to those sentiments of honor which had received such illustration in his own noble career.  “If you quit your most important station till I can get” reliefs for you, “depend upon it, your illustrious Prince will disapprove of (in this instance) your punctilious execution of orders.”  “We shall soon get more troops from Messina and Minorca; and I am not a little anxious for the honour of Portugal and your Excellency, that you should be present at the surrender.  I hold myself responsible.”  “You was the first at the blockade.  Your Excellency’s conduct has gained you the love and esteem of Governor Ball, all the British officers and men, and the whole Maltese people; and give me leave to add the name of Nelson as one of your warmest admirers, as an officer and a friend.”

As he dealt with the Portuguese admiral, so, in due measure, he conducted his intercourse with all others who came within the scope of his widely ranging activities.  Already more Neapolitan than the King, to the Russian he became as a Russian, to the Turk as a Turk, all things to all men, if he could by any means promote the interest of the Allied cause and save Malta.  Amid the diverse and conflicting motives of a coalition, Nelson played a steady hand, his attention unified, and his sight cleared, by an unwavering regard to the single object which he compressed into the words, “Down, down, with the French!” In that sense, he asserts truthfully enough to each and all of his correspondents that the advantage of their country and their monarch is as dear to him as that of Great Britain.  He touches with artful skill upon the evident interests of each nation, appeals to the officer’s sense of the cherished desires of his sovereign, and, while frankly setting forth the truths necessary to be spoken, as to the comparative claims upon himself of the various portions of the field, he insinuates, rather than suggests, what the person immediately addressed ought to be doing in furtherance of the one great aim.  Withal, despite the uneasiness to which he is constantly a prey on account of the failures of others, no lack of confidence in the one to whom he is writing is suffered to appear.  Each is not only exhorted and cheered, but patted on the back with an implied approbation, which in his own service constituted much of his well-deserved influence.