o wonder they were
sickly, for they had been sixty days at sea. This excited Nelson's
derision--not unjustly. "From the circumstance of having been longer
than that time at sea, do we attribute our getting healthy. It has
stamped with me the extent of their nautical abilities: long may they
remain in their present state." The last sentence reveals his
intuitive appreciation of the fact that the Spain of that day could in
no true sense be the ally of Great Britain; for, at the moment he
penned the wish, the impotence or defection of their allies would
leave the British fleet actually inferior to the enemy in those
waters. He never forgot these impressions, nor the bungling efforts of
the Spaniards to form a line of battle. Up to the end of his life the
prospect of a Spanish war involved no military anxieties, but only the
prospect of more prize money.

Among the various rumors of that troubled time, there came one that
the French were fitting their ships with forges to bring their shot to
a red heat, and so set fire to the enemy's vessel in which they might
lodge. Nelson was promptly ready with a counter and quite adequate
tactical move. "This, if true," he wrote, "I humbly conceive would
have been as well kept secret; but as it is known, we must take care
to get so close that their red shots may go _through_ both sides, when
it will not matter whether they are hot or cold." It is somewhat odd
that the extremely diligent and painstaking Sir Harris Nicolas, in his
version of this letter, should have dropped the concluding sentence,
one of the most important and characteristic occurring in Nelson's
correspondence at this time.

On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had received orders to
consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, and to take all vessels of
whatever nation bound into those ports. He at once recognized the
importance of this step, and the accurate judgment that dictated it.
The British could not, as he said, get at the enemy in his fortified
harbor; but they might by this means exercise the pressure that would
force him to come out. Undoubtedly, whether on a large or on a small
scale, whether it concern the whole plan of a war or of a campaign, or
merely the question of a single military position, the best way to
compel an unwilling foe to action, and to spoil his waiting game which
is so onerous to the would-be assailant, is to attack him elsewhere,
to cut short his resources, and make his posi