defence, in case of threatened invasion.  Concerning their dispositions he received fairly flattering assurances, which in the event were not realized.  If the men were certified that they would not be detained after the danger was over, it was said, they certainly would go on board.  “This service, my dear Lord,” he wrote to St. Vincent, “above all others, would be terrible for me:  to get up and harangue like a recruiting sergeant; but as I am come forth, I feel that I ought to do this disagreeable service as well as any other, if judged necessary.”

Three days more, and he was off Boulogne in a frigate with some bomb-vessels.  The French admiral, Latouche Treville, had moored in front of the pier a line of gun-vessels, twenty-four in number, fastened together from end to end.  At these, and at the shipping in the small port, some bombs were thrown.  Not much injury was done on either side.  Prevented by an easterly wind from going on to Flushing, as he had intended, Nelson returned to Margate on the 6th of August, issued a proclamation to the Fencibles, assuring them that the French undoubtedly intended an invasion, that their services were absolutely required at once on board the defence-ships, and that they could rely upon being returned to their homes as soon as the danger was over.  Out of twenty-six hundred, only three hundred and eighty-five volunteered to this urgent call.  “They are no more willing to give up their occupations than their superiors,” wrote Nelson, with characteristically shrewd insight into a frame of mind wholly alien to his own self-sacrificing love of Country and of glory.

Hurrying from station to station, on the shores, and in the channels of the Thames, he was on the 12th of August back at Margate, evidently disappointed in the prospects for coast-defence, and more and more inclining to the deep-sea cruising, and to action on the enemy’s coast, recommended by the Admiralty, and consonant to his own temper, always disdainful of mere defensive measures.  “Our active force is perfect,” he wrote to St. Vincent, “and possesses so much zeal that I only want to catch that Buonaparte on the water.”  He has satisfied himself that the French preparations were greatly exaggerated; Boulogne in fact could not harbor the needed vessels, unless enlarged, as afterwards by Napoleon.  “Where is our invasion to come from?  The time is gone.”  Nevertheless, he favors an attack of some sort, suggests an expedition against Flushing, with five thousand troops, and proposes a consultation.  St. Vincent replied that he did not believe in consultations, and had always avoided them.  “I disapprove of unnecessary consultations as much as any man,” retorted Nelson, “yet being close to the Admiralty, I should not feel myself justified in risking our ships through the channels of Flushing without buoys and pilots, without a consultation with such men as your Lordship, and also I believe you would think an order absolutely necessary.”