I have only had my foot twice on shore at
Cadiz. We are absolutely getting sick from fatigue." "I am here
[Naples] with news of our most glorious and great success, but, alas!
the fatigue of getting it has been so great that the fleet generally,
and I am sorry to say, my ship most so, are knocked up. Day after day,
week after week, month after month, we have not been two gun shots
from Toulon." The evident looseness of this statement, for the ship
had only been a little over a month off Toulon, shows the impression
the service had made upon his mind, for he was not prone to such
exaggerations. "It is hardly possible," he says again, "to conceive
the state of my ship; I have little less than one hundred sick." This
condition of things is an eloquent testimony to the hardships endured;
for Nelson was singularly successful, both before and after these
days, in maintaining the health of a ship's company. His biographers
say that during the term of three years that he commanded the "Boreas"
in the West Indies, not a single officer or man died out of her whole
complement,--an achievement almost incredible in that sickly
climate;[19] and he himself records that in his two months' chase of
Villeneuve, in 1805, no death from sickness occurred among the seven
or eight thousand persons in the fleet. He attributed these remarkable
results to his attention, not merely to the physical surroundings of
the crews, but also to the constant mental stimulus and interest,
which he aroused by providing the seamen with occupation, frequent
amusements, and change of scene, thus keeping the various faculties in
continual play, and avoiding the monotony which most saps health,
through its deadening influence on the mind and spirits.

The "Agamemnon" reached Naples on the 12th of September, and remained
there four days. Nelson pressed the matter of reinforcements with such
diligence, and was so heartily sustained by the British minister, Sir
William Hamilton, that he obtained the promise of six thousand troops
to sail at once under the convoy of the "Agamemnon." "I have acted for
Lord Hood," he wrote, "with a zeal which no one could exceed;" and a
few weeks later he says: "The Lord is very much pleased with my
conduct about the troops at Naples, which I undertook without any
authority whatever from him; and they arrived at Toulon before his
requisition reached Naples." It appears, therefore, that his orders
were rather those of a despatch-bearer