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.