"If the Russians continue increasing their naval force in this country [that is, in the eastern Mediterranean], I do not think the French will venture to the eastward; therefore, I rather expect they will, as the year advances, try to get out of the straits; and should they accomplish it with 7,000 troops on board, I am sure we should lose half our West India Islands, for I think they would go there, and not to Ireland.

Whatever may be their destination, I shall certainly follow, be it even to the East Indies." The last allusion is interesting, for it shows the wide flight of his speculations, which had found utterance before in the casual remark that his ships were provisioned for a voyage to Madras; and, even as a guess, it struck perilously near one of Bonaparte's purposes.

The splendid decision, formulated so long before the case arose, to follow wherever they went, held in its womb the germ of the great campaign of Trafalgar; while in the surmise that the Toulon fleet was bound to the West Indies, the arrow of conjecture had gone straight to the bull's-eye.
In this same letter, addressed to General Villettes, at Malta, formerly his coadjutor at the siege of Bastia, Nelson, in the intimacy of friendship, reveals what was to him at once the secret of health and the fulfilment of desire; the congenial atmosphere in which his being throve, and expanded to fulfil the limits of his genius.

"Such a pursuit would do more, perhaps, towards restoring me to health than all the doctors; but I fear" (his application for leave having gone in) "this is reserved for some happier man.

Not that I complain; I have had a good race of glory, but we are never satisfied, although I hope I am duly thankful for the past; but one cannot help, being at sea, longing for a little more." "I hope," he had written a few months earlier to Lord Minto, "some day, very soon, to fulfil the warmest wishes of my Country and expectations of my friends.