“I never said that they were to be despised,” said Lord Nelson. “Resource, courage, yes.... If that Toulon fleet gives me the slip, all our squadrons from Gibraltar to Brest will be in jeopardy. Why don’t they come out and be done with it? Don’t I keep far enough out of their way?” he cried.
Vincent remarked the nervous agitation of the frail figure with a concern augmented by a fit of coughing which came on the Admiral. He was quite alarmed by its violence. He watched the Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean choking and gasping so helplessly that he felt compelled to turn his eyes away from the painful spectacle; but he noticed also how quickly Lord Nelson recovered from the subsequent exhaustion.
“This is anxious work, Vincent,” he said. “It is killing me. I aspire to repose somewhere in the country, in the midst of fields, out of reach of the sea and the Admiralty and dispatches and orders, and responsibility too. I have been just finishing a letter to tell them at home I have hardly enough breath in my body to carry me on from day to day.... But I am like that white-headed man you admire so much, Vincent,” he pursued, with a weary smile, “I will stick to my task till perhaps some shot from the enemy puts an end to everything.... Let us see what there may be in those papers you have brought on board.”
The secretary in the cabin had arranged them in separate piles.
“What is it all about?” asked the Admiral, beginning again to pace restlessly up and down the cabin.
“At the first glance, the most important, my Lord, are the orders for marine authorities in Corsica and Naples to make certain dispositions in view of an expedition to Egypt.”
“I always thought so,” said the Admiral, his eye gleaming at the attentive countenance of Captain Vincent. “This is a smart piece of work on your part, Vincent. I can do no better than send you back to your station. Yes ... Egypt ... the East.... Everything points that way,” he soliloquised under Vincent’s eyes, while the secretary, picking up the papers with care, rose quietly and went out to have them translated and to make an abstract for the Admiral.
“And yet who knows!” exclaimed Lord Nelson, standing still for a moment. “But the blame or the glory must be mine alone. I will seek counsel from no man.” Captain Vincent felt himself forgotten, invisible, less than a shadow in the presence of a nature capable of such vehement feelings. “How long can he last?” he asked himself with sincere concern.
The Admiral, however, soon remembered his presence, and at the end of another ten minutes Captain Vincent left the Victory, feeling, like all officers who approached Lord Nelson, that he had been speaking with a personal friend; and with a renewed devotion for the great sea-officer’s soul dwelling in the frail body of the Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s ships in the Mediterranean. While he was being pulled back to his ship a general signal went up in the Victory for the fleet to form line, as convenient, ahead and astern of the Admiral; followed by another to the Amelia to part company. Vincent accordingly gave his orders to make sail, and, directing the master to shape a course for Cape Cicié, went down into his cabin. He had been up nearly the whole of the last three nights, and he wanted to get a little sleep. His slumbers, however, were short and disturbed. Early in the afternoon he found himself broad awake and reviewing in his mind the events of the day before. The order to shoot three brave men in cold blood, terribly distasteful at the time, was lying heavily on him. Perhaps he had been impressed by Peyrol’s white head, his obstinacy to escape him, the determination shown to the very last minute; by something in the whole episode that suggested a more than common devotion to duty and a spirit of daring defiance. With his robust health, simple good nature, and sanguine temperament touched with a little irony, Captain Vincent was a man of generous feelings and of easily moved sympathies.
“Yet,” he reflected, “they have been asking for it. There could be only one end to that affair. But the fact remains that they were defenceless and unarmed and particularly harmless-looking, and at the same time as brave as any. That old chap now....” He wondered how much of exact truth there was in Symons’ tale of adventure. He concluded that the facts must have been true but that Symons’ interpretation of them made it extraordinarily difficult to discover what really there was under all that. That craft certainly was fit for blockade running. Lord Nelson had been pleased. Captain Vincent went on deck with the kindliest feelings towards all men, alive and dead.