after its beginning, in January. Consequently, owing to the fall of
the water, much additional trouble had been experienced in the
advance, the men were proportionately weakened by toil and exposure,
and the wet months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were
at hand. Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy's weapons in a
direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less than by the protracted
and sickly labors of the spade; while with San Juan subdued, the force
could receive all the care possible in such a climate, and under the
best conditions await the return of good weather for further progress.

In military enterprises there will frequently arise the question, Is
time or life in this case of the greater value? Those regularly
ordered and careful procedures which most economize the blood of the
soldier may, by their inevitable delays, seriously imperil the objects
of the campaign as a whole; or they may even, while less sanguinary,
entail indirectly a greater loss of men than do prompter measures. In
such doubtful matters Nelson's judgment was usually sound; and his
instinct, which ever inclined to instant and vigorous action, was
commonly by itself alone an accurate guide, in a profession whose
prizes are bestowed upon quick resolve more often than upon deliberate
consultation. The same intuition that in his prime dictated his
instant, unhesitating onslaught at the Nile, depriving the French of
all opportunity for further preparation,--that caused him in the
maturity of his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, "every hour's
delay makes the enemy stronger; we shall never be so good a match for
them as at this moment,"--that induced him at Trafalgar to modify his
deliberately prepared plan in favor of one vastly more hazardous, but
which seized and held the otherwise fleeting chance,--led him here
also at San Juan, unknown, and scarcely more than a boy, to press the
policy of immediate attack.