stopped him hastily from speaking on the quarter-deck, within earshot of others, and took him into the cabin.  The stranger had been one of Nelson’s old midshipmen and a favorite; had started with him in the “Agamemnon,” and by him had been made a commander after the Nile.  “Captain Hoste,” said Parker, “I believe you owe all your advancement in the service to my uncle, Lord St. Vincent, and to Lord Nelson.  I am avoiding Sir John Orde’s squadron by desire of Lord Nelson; you know his handwriting; I must go on."[81] (Parker being senior to Hoste, the latter could not detain him by his own authority; and he understood from this avowal that Orde’s orders, if produced, would become a matter of record, would be disobeyed, and a court-martial must follow.) “The question of a court-martial would be very mischievous.  Do you not think it would be better if you were not to meet the ‘Amazon’ this night?” Captain Hoste, after a little reflection, left the ship without giving his admiral’s orders to Parker.[82]

Having determined not to leave Bickerton alone, Nelson decided to keep secret his own leave to return to England.  “I am much obliged by their Lordships’ kind compliance with my request, which is absolutely necessary from the present state of my health,” he writes on the 30th of December; “and I shall avail myself of their Lordships’ permission, the moment another admiral, in the room of Admiral Campbell, joins the fleet, unless the enemy’s fleet should be at sea, when I should not think of quitting my command until after the battle.”  “I shall never quit my post,” he tells a friend, “when the French fleet is at sea, as a commander-in-chief of great celebrity once did,”—­a not very generous fling at St. Vincent.  “I would sooner die at my post, than have such a stigma upon my memory.”  “Nothing has kept me here,” he writes Elliot, “but the fear for the escape of the French fleet, and that they should get to either Naples or Sicily in the short days.  Nothing but gratitude to those good Sovereigns could have induced me to stay one moment after Sir John Orde’s extraordinary command, for his general conduct towards me is not such as I had a right to expect.”

During this last month of monotonous routine, while off Toulon and at Madalena, he had occasion to express opinions on current general topics, which found little room in his mind after the French fleet began to move.  There was then a report of a large expedition for foreign service forming in England, and rumor, as usual, had a thousand tongues as to its destination.  “A blow struck in Europe,” Nelson wrote to Lord Moira, “would do more towards making us respected, and of course facilitate a peace, than the possession of Mexico or Peru,”—­a direction towards which the commercial ambitions of Great Britain had a traditional inclination, fostered by some military men and statesmen, who foresaw the break-up of the Spanish colonial system.  “Above all, I hope we shall have no buccaneering expeditions.