X.
March 8th, 1800.
MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,
I thank you kindly for all your letters and good wishes. It is my determination, my health requiring it, to come to Palermo, and to stay two weeks with you.
I must again urge, that four gunb-oats may be ordered for the service of Malta; they will most essentially assist in the reduction of the place, by preventing small vessels from getting in or out.
I think, from the enemy, on the night of the fourth, trying and getting out for a short distance, a very fast-sailing polacca, that Vaubois is extremely anxious to send dispatches to France, to say he cannot much longer hold out: and, if our troops, as Captain Blackwood thinks, are coming from Gibraltar and Minorca, I have no idea the enemy will hold out a week.
I beg General Acton will order the gun-boats.
Troubridge has got the jaundice, and is very ill.
As I shall so very soon see you, I shall only say, that I am ever, your obliged and affectionate