captured the principal ships, and dispersed the rest, so that not one has reached the port.”  It was indeed a marvellous piece of what men call luck.  Nelson had never gone near Malta since October, 1798, till Keith took him there on the 15th of February, 1800.  The division had no sooner arrived at the island, than a frigate brought word of a French squadron having been seen off the west end of Sicily.  It was then blowing strong from southeast, and raining.  Keith took his own station off the mouth of the harbor, placed other ships where he thought best, and signalled Nelson to chase to windward with three ships-of-the-line, which were afterwards joined by a fourth, then cruising on the southeast of the island.  The next day the wind shifted to northwest, but it was not until the morning of the 18th that the enemy were discovered.  Guns were then heard to the northward, by those on board the “Foudroyant,” which made all sail in pursuit, and soon sighted the “Alexander” chasing four French sail.  “Pray God we may get alongside of them,” wrote Nelson in his journal; “the event I leave to Providence.  I think if I can take one 74 by myself, I would retire, and give the staff to more able hands.”  “I feel anxious to get up with these ships,” he wrote to Lady Hamilton, “and shall be unhappy not to take them myself, for first my greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country, and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory, I am the most offending soul alive. But here I am in a heavy sea and thick fog—­Oh, God! the wind subsided—­but I trust to Providence I shall have them. 18th in the evening, I have got her—­Le Genereux—­thank God! 12 out of 13, onely the Guillaume Telle remaining; I am after the others.”  The enemy’s division had consisted of this seventy-four, a large transport, also captured, and three corvettes which escaped.

An account of Nelson on the quarter-deck on this occasion has been transmitted by an eye-witness, whose recollections, committed to paper nearly forty years later, are in many points evidently faulty, but in the present instance reflect a frame of mind in the great admiral in perfect keeping with the words last quoted from his own letter.  The writer was then a midshipman of the “Foudroyant;” and the scene as described opens with a hail from a lieutenant at the masthead, with his telescope on the chase.

“’Deck there! the stranger is evidently a man of war—­she is a line-of-battle-ship, my lord, and going large on the starboard tack.’

“’Ah! an enemy, Mr. Stains.  I pray God it may be Le Genereux.  The signal for a general chase, Sir Ed’ard, (the Nelsonian pronunciation of Edward,) make the Foudroyant fly!’

“Thus spoke the heroic Nelson; and every exertion that emulation could inspire was used to crowd the squadron with canvas, the Northumberland taking the lead, with the flag-ship close on her quarter.

“’This will not do, Sir Ed’ard; it is certainly Le Genereux, and to my flag-ship she can alone surrender.  Sir Ed’ard, we must and shall beat the Northumberland.’