be at them, and so do I, as great a boy as any of them, for I consider this as being at school, and going to England as going home for the holidays, therefore I really long to finish my task.”  His confidence in himself and in his fortune was growing apace at this time, as was both natural and justifiable.  “This day, twenty-two years,” he writes soon after, on the 11th of June, “I was made a Post-Captain by Sir Peter Parker.  If you meet him again, say that I shall drink his health in a bumper, for I do not forget that I owe my present exalted rank to his partiality, although I feel, if I had even been in an humbler sphere, that Nelson would have been Nelson still.”  Although always reverently thankful to the Almighty for a favorable issue to events, there does not seem to have been in him any keen consciousness of personal dependence, such as led Moltke to mark the text, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

While thus lying, about twenty-four miles from the main body, a report came that the Swedish squadron had put to sea.  Alarmed lest a battle might take place in his absence, Nelson jumped into a boat alongside, and started for a six hours’ pull against wind and current to join the fleet, in haste so great that he refused even to wait for a boat cloak.  “His anxiety lest the fleet should have sailed before he got on board one of them,” tells the officer who was with him, “is beyond all conception.  I will quote some expressions in his own words.  It was extremely cold, and I wished him to put on a great coat of mine which was in the boat:  ’No, I am not cold; my anxiety for my Country will keep me warm.  Do you not think the fleet has sailed?’ ’I should suppose not, my Lord.’  ’If they are, we shall follow then to Carlscrona in the boat, by G—­d!’—­I merely state this to show how his thoughts must have been employed.  The idea of going in a small boat, rowing six oars, without a single morsel of anything to eat or drink, the distance of about fifty leagues, must convince the world that every other earthly consideration than that of serving his Country, was totally banished from his thoughts.”  Such preoccupation with one idea, and that idea so fine, brings back to us the old Nelson, who has found himself again amid the storm and stress of danger and of action, for which he was created.

About midnight he reached the “Elephant,” where his flag was again hoisted; but he did not escape unharmed from the exposure he had too carelessly undergone.  “Since April 15,” he wrote several weeks afterwards to Lady Hamilton, “I have been rapidly in a decline, but am now, thank God, I firmly believe, past all danger.  At that time I rowed five hours in a bitter cold night.  A cold struck me to the heart.  On the 27th I had one of my terrible spasms of heart-stroke, which had near carried me off, and the severe disappointment of being kept in a situation where there can be nothing to do before August, almost killed me.  From that time to the end of May I brought up what every one thought was my lungs, and I was emaciated more than you can conceive.”