particularly at heart; and his mind glowed with this idea as much when
he was simply captain of the Albemarle, and had obtained none of the
honours of his Country, as when he was afterwards decorated with so
much well-earned distinction."

The war of 1778 was now fast drawing to its close; the preliminaries
of peace being signed in January, 1783, though not ratified till the
following September. Hood cruised off Cap François, a naval station of
the French at the west end of Haiti, to intercept the fleet from
Boston, which was understood to be on its way to the Caribbean; but
the enemy, learning his whereabouts, went through the Mona Passage,
east of the island, thus avoiding a meeting, and was next heard of by
the British as being off Curaçao far to the southward. Nelson,
therefore, had no opportunity to show his prowess in battle; and as
only three letters remain covering this uneventful period, little is
known of his movements, except that he made an abortive attempt to
recapture Turk's Island from the French with a small force of ships he
was able to gather at short notice. An interesting indication of the
spirit which animated him transpires in the first of the three letters
mentioned. He had received unexpected orders to wait in New York after
Hood's leaving. "I was to have sailed with the fleet this day, but for
some private reasons, when my ship was under sail from New York to
join Lord Hood, at Sandy Hook, I was sent for on shore, and told I was
to be kept forty-eight hours after the sailing of the fleet. It is
much to my private advantage," allowing more latitude for picking up
prizes, without having to share with the other ships, "but I had much
rather have sailed with the fleet." "Money," he continues, "is the
great object here," on the North American Station, "nothing else is
attended to,"--a motive of action which he always rejected with
disdain, although by no means insensible to the value of money, nor