At half-past ten drove from dear dear Merton, where I left all which I hold dear in this world, to go to serve my King and Country.  May the great God whom I adore enable me to fulfil the expectations of my Country; and if it is His good pleasure that I should return, my thanks will never cease being offered up to the Throne of His Mercy.  If it is His good Providence to cut short my days upon earth, I bow with the greatest submission, relying that He will protect those so dear to me, that I may leave behind.  His will be done:  Amen, Amen, Amen.

At six o’clock on the morning of the 14th Nelson arrived at Portsmouth.  At half-past eleven his flag was again hoisted on board the “Victory,” and at 2 P.M. he embarked.  His youngest and favorite sister, Mrs. Matcham, with her husband, had gone to Portsmouth to see him off.  As they were parting, he said to her:  “Oh, Katty! that gypsy;” referring to his fortune told by a gypsy in the West Indies many years before, that he should arrive at the head of his profession by the time he was forty.  “What then?” he had asked at the moment; but she replied, “I can tell you no more; the book is closed."[120] The Battle of the Nile, preceding closely the completion of his fortieth year, not unnaturally recalled the prediction to mind, where the singularity of the coincidence left it impressed; and now, standing as he did on the brink of great events, with half-acknowledged foreboding weighing on his heart, he well may have yearned to know what lay beyond that silence, within the closed covers of the book of fate.

FOOTNOTES: 

[110] In a letter to the Earl of Mornington, dated December 21st, 1805, Wellington, then Wellesley, said, “I arrived in England about September 10th.”  The margin of time for meeting Nelson, who left Merton on the 13th, was therefore small, and fixes very closely the date of this interesting interview.  The Colonial and War Offices seem then to have been under one head.

[111] Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker, vol. ii. p. 233.

[112] The Prime Minister Pitt.

[113] Compare for example, ante, vol. i. p. 421.

[114] Lady Hamilton’s mother.

[115] Nelson to Right Hon. George Rose, August 29 and September 3, 1805:  Nicolas, vol. vii. pp. 18, 19, 29.

[116] Ante, p. 31.

[117] This is the earliest intimation that has come under the author’s eye of the formulation (as distinguished from the development) of the groups of Orders in Council of 1807, bearing upon the Neutral Trade, which were issued and carried out by a Ministry other than the one which Nelson knew.  The measure was clearly under consideration before Trafalgar.

[118] That is, the ship ready to sail in half an hour, one of the two anchors which moor a ship being lifted.