All our fellows are longing to 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.