God knows I only serve to fight those scoundrels; and if I cannot do that, I should be better on shore." When the weather cleared, and a reconnoissance showed the news was false, his intense relief found expression in the words: "I believe this is the only time in my life, that I was glad to hear the French were in port." "The French ships," he says at another time, "have either altered their anchorage, or some of them have got to sea in the late gales: the idea has given me half a fever.

If that admiral were to cheat me out of my hopes of meeting him, it would kill me much easier than one of his balls.

Since we sat down to dinner Captain Moubray has made the signal, but I am very far from being easy." On the 12th of May, 1804, there was a change of administration in England.

Earl St.Vincent left the Admiralty, as First Lord, and was succeeded by Lord Melville.

A few days before this Nelson, by a general promotion, had become Vice-Admiral of the White, the rank in which he died eighteen months later.
The return of summer had improved his health from the low condition into which it had fallen during the winter, but he did not flatter himself as to the future.