recent gale had been swept to the eastward.  Thus trivially preoccupied, they practically neglected Howe, who on his part stripped for action by sending the supply vessels to the Zaffarine Islands, where the vagarious instincts of their captains would be controlled by an anchor on the bottom.  On the 14th the allies bore north from the British, close under the Spanish coast, and visible only from the mastheads.  On the 15th the wind came east, and the convoy and fleet began cautiously to move towards Gibraltar, the enemy apparently out of sight, and certainly to the eastward.  On the evening of the 16th eighteen supply ships were at the mole, and on the 18th all had arrived.  Gibraltar was equipped for another year’s endurance.

We have less than could be wished of particulars touching this performance of Howe’s, from the day of leaving England to that of fulfilment, five full weeks later.  Inference and comment has to be built up upon incidents transmitted disconnectedly, interpreted in connection with the usual known conditions and the relative strength of the two opposing parties.  To professional understanding, thus far supplemented, much is clear; quite enough, at the least, to avouch the deliberation, the steadiness, the professional aptitude, the unremitting exertion that so well supplies the place of celerity,—­never resting, if never hasting,—­the calculated daring at fit moments, and above all the unfailing self-possession and self-reliance which at every instant up to the last secured to the British enterprise the full value of the other qualities possessed by the Commander-in-chief.  A biographical notice of Howe cannot be complete without quoting the tribute of an accomplished officer belonging to one of the navies then arrayed against him.  “The qualities displayed by Lord Howe during this short campaign,” says Captain Chevalier of the French service, “rose to the full height of the mission which he had to fulfil.  This operation, one of the finest in the War of American Independence, merits a praise equal to that of a victory.  If the English fleet was favored by circumstances,—­and it is rare that in such enterprises one can succeed without the aid of fortune,—­it was above all the Commander-in-chief’s quickness of perception, the accuracy of his judgment, and the rapidity of his decisions that assured success.”

Having accomplished his main object and landed besides fifteen hundred barrels of powder from his own ships, Howe tarried no longer.  Like Nelson, at Gibraltar on his way to St. Vincent, he would not trifle with an easterly wind, without which he could not leave the Straits against the constant inset; neither would he adventure action, against a force superior by a third, amid the currents that had caused him so trying an experience.  There was, moreover, the important strategic consideration that if the allied fleets, which were again in sight, followed him out, they would thereby be drawn from any possible molestation