instance prove his case, in the previous disobedience to Keith, for
which the Admiralty had censured him, Nelson overreached himself and
certainly fell into an ungenerous action. His vaunt of success by the
road of disobedience rested only on the fact that he had failed to see
Keith's signal. This the latter did not know, and evidently considered
he had complied with its spirit. The signal to chase to windward was
not strained to disobedience in being construed to search a fairly
wide area for the enemy, keeping the rendezvous, which was also the
enemy's destination, to leeward, so as to be readily regained. The
"Queen Charlotte," Keith's flagship, covered the inner line, and,
being a first-rate, was competent to handle any force that could come
out of Toulon. There is a good deal of human nature in this captious
unofficial attack on a superior, whose chief fault, as towards
himself, was that he had been the victim of disobedience; but it is
not pleasant to see in a man so truly great.

The "Généreux" carried the flag of a rear-admiral, who was killed in
the action. Nelson seized the opportunity of further conciliating the
Czar, by sending the sword of this officer to him, as Grand Master of
the Order of Malta. Upon rejoining Keith, he reported in person, as
custom demands. "Lord Keith received my account and myself like a
philosopher (but very unlike you)," he wrote to Hamilton; "it did not,
that I could perceive, cause a pleasing muscle in his face." "Had you
seen the Peer receive me," he wrote to Lady Hamilton the same day, "I
know not what you would have done; but I can guess. But never mind. I
told him that I had made a vow, if I took the Généreux by myself, it
was my intention to strike my flag. To which he made no answer." What
could he very well say, if a man chose to throw away his chances,
especially when that man was a subordinate who a short time before had
flatly refused to obey his orders. Soreness and testiness had full