Hawke was now in the road of good luck, pure and unadulterated.  His happy action in capturing the Poder illustrates indeed opportunity improved; but it was opportunity of the every day sort, and it is the merit that seized it, rather than the opportunity itself, that strikes the attention.  The present case was different.  A young rear-admiral had little reason to hope for independent command; but Warren, a well-tried officer, possessing the full confidence of the First Lord, Anson, himself a master in the profession, was in poor health, and for that reason had applied for Hawke to be “joined with him in the command,” apparently because he was the one flag-officer immediately available.  He proposed that Hawke should for the present occasion take his place, sail with a few ships named, and with them join the squadron, then at sea in charge of a captain.  Anson demurred at first, on the ground of Hawke’s juniority,—­he was forty-two,—­and Warren, while persisting in his request, shares the doubt; for he writes, “I observe what you say about the ships abroad being under so young an officer.  I am, and have been uneasy about it, though I hope he will do well, and it could not then be avoided.”  Anson, however, was not fixed in his opposition; for Warren continued, “From your letter I have so little reason to doubt his being put under my command, that I have his instructions all ready; and he is prepared to go at a moment’s notice.”  The instructions were issued the following day, August 8th, and on the 9th Hawke sailed.  But while there was in this so much of luck, he was again to show that he was not one to let occasion slip.  Admiral Farragut is reported to have said, “Every man has one chance.”  It depends upon himself whether he is by it made or marred.  Burrish and Hawke toed the same line on the morning of February 22d, and they had had that day at least equal opportunity.

Hawke’s adequacy to his present fortune betrayed itself again in a phrase to Warren, “I have nothing so much at heart as the faithful discharge of my duty, and in such manner as will give satisfaction both to the Lords of the Admiralty and yourself.  This shall ever be my utmost ambition, and no lucre of profit, or other views, shall induce me to act otherwise.”  Not prize-money; but honor, through service.  And this in fact not only ruled his thought but in the moment of decision inspired his act.  Curiously enough, however, he was here at odds with the spirit of Anson and of Warren.  The latter, in asking Hawke’s employment, said the present cruise was less important than the one to succeed it, “for the galleons”—­the Spanish treasure-ships—­“make it a general rule to come home late in the fall or winter.”  Warren by prize-money and an American marriage was the richest commoner in England, and Anson it was that had captured the great galleon five years before, to his own great increase; but it was Hawke who, acknowledging a letter from Warren, as this cruise was drawing to