afterwards the wind died away, and both fleets were much scattered. A
British ship brought to action one of the French which had been in the
first battle; indeed, the French accounts say that the latter had fought
three enemies. However that may be, she was again severely mauled; but
the English vessel opposed to her ran on a shoal, and lost all her
masts. With this ended the events of that awful night.

The net results of this stirring week completely relieved the fears of
the British ministers. Whatever the objects of the concentration at
Cadiz, they were necessarily frustrated. Though the first attack was
repulsed, the three French ships had been very roughly handled; and, of
the relieving force, three out of six were now lost to the enemy. "Sir
James Saumarez's action has put us upon velvet," wrote St. Vincent, then
head of the Admiralty; and in the House of Peers he highly eulogized the
admiral's conduct, as also did Nelson. The former declared that "this
gallant achievement surpassed everything he had ever met with in his
reading or service," a statement sufficiently sweeping; while the praise
of the hero of the Nile was the more to be prized because there never
was cordial sympathy between him and Saumarez. Closely as they had been
associated, Nelson's letters to his brother officer began always "My
dear Sir James," not "My dear Saumarez."

In this blaze of triumph the story of Saumarez fitly terminates. He was
never again engaged in serious encounter with the enemy. The first war
with the French republic ended three months after the battle of
Algeciras. After the second began, in 1803, he was, until 1807,
commander-in-chief at the Channel Islands, watching the preparations for
the invasion of England, and counteracting the efforts of cruisers
against British commerce. In 1808, in consequence of the agreements of
Tilsit between the Czar and Napoleon, affairs in the Baltic became such
as to demand the presence of a large British fleet,--first to support
Sweden, then at war with Russia, and later to protect the immense
British trade, which, under neutral flags and by contraband methods,
maintained by way of the northern sea the intercourse of Great Britain
with the Continent. Of this trade Sweden was an important intermediary,
and her practical neutrality was essential to its continuance. This was
insured by the firm yet moderate attitude of Sir James Saumarez, even
when she had been forced by France to declare w