than of a negotiator; but that
he, with the quick initiative he always displayed, took upon himself
diplomatic action, to further the known wishes of his superior and the
common cause of England and Naples. It was upon this occasion that
Nelson first met Lady Hamilton, who exercised so marked an influence
over his later life; but, though she was still in the prime of her
singular loveliness, being yet under thirty, not a ripple stirred the
surface of his soul, afterward so powerfully perturbed by this
fascinating woman. "Lady Hamilton," he writes to his wife, "has been
wonderfully kind and good to Josiah [his stepson]. She is a young
woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which
she is raised." His mind was then too full of what was to be done; not
as after the Nile, when, unstrung by reaction from the exhausting
emotions of the past months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration
and cloyed with flattery only.

The prospect of sailing with the convoy of troops, as well as of a few
days' repose for the wearied ship's company, was cut short by the news
that a French ship of war, with some merchant vessels in convoy, had
anchored on the Sardinian coast. Although there were at Naples several
Neapolitan naval vessels, and one Spaniard, none of them moved; and as
the Prime Minister sent the information to Nelson, he felt bound to
go, though but four days in port. "Unfit as my ship was, I had nothing
left for the honour of our country but to sail, which I did in two
hours afterwards. It was necessary to show them what an English
man-of-war would do." The expected enemy was not found, and, after
stretching along the coast in a vain search, the "Agamemnon" put into
Leghorn on the 25th of September, nine days after leaving Naples,--to
"absolutely save my poor fellows," wrote her captain to his brother.
But even so, he purposed staying at his new anchorage but three days,
"for I cannot bear the thought of being absent from the scene of
action" at Toulon. In the same letter he mentions that since the 23d
of April--five months--the ship had been at anchor only twenty days.

The unwavering resolution and prompt decision of his character thus
crop out at every step. In Leghorn he found a large French frigate,
which had been on the point of sailing when his ship came in sight. "I
am obliged to keep close watch to take care he does not give me the
slip, which he is inclined to do. I shall pursue him, and lea