opinion, I must stand or fall.  However erroneous my judgment may be, I feel conscious of my honest intentions; which, I hope, will bear me up under the greatest misfortune that could happen to me as an officer, that of your lordship’s thinking me wrong.”

It was now the object of his incessant contemplation, to ascertain the possible course of the enemy, and what could be their ultimate design.  He feared, indeed, that Sicily, in his absence, had fallen under the French yoke.  With a mind too perturbed for repose, he was wholly incapable of remaining inactive.  He shaped his course, therefore, to the northward, for the coast of Caramania; that he might, as expeditiously as possible, arrive at some quarter where information was likely to be obtained.  On the 4th of July, he made that coast; and, steering along the south side of Candia, and carrying a press of sail, both night and day, with a contrary wind, being also in want of water, the fleet came, on the 18th, in sight of the island of Sicily, and he determined to enter the port of Syracuse.

Such instructions, however, had been sent to the governor of Syracuse, through the preponderancy of French interest at this period, that he would have found it difficult even to enter, and probably have obtained little or no refreshment of any kind, though much was absolutely necessary, had he not, very fortunately, experienced the beneficial effects of Lady Hamilton’s powerful influence secretly exerted in the only quarter which was not rendered impenetrable by the menacing insinuations of the then Gallic resident at Naples.  It was the assistance he now procured, by virtue of the talismanic gift received from Lady Hamilton, and without which he could not, in any reasonable time, have pursued the French fleet, and possibly might never have come up with them, that he so solemnly recognized, a short time before his death, as to make it the subject of a codicil annexed to his will, in which he expressly bequeaths that lady to the remuneration of his country.  On the 20th, in a letter to Sir William Hamilton, he says—­

“It is an old saying, the devil’s children have the devil’s luck.  I cannot find, or to this moment learn, beyond vague conjecture, where the French fleet are gone to.  All my ill fortune, hitherto, has proceeded from want of frigates.  Off Cape Passaro, on the 22d of June, at daylight, I saw two frigates, which were supposed to be French; and, it has been said, since, that a line of battle ship was to leeward of them, with the riches of Malta on board; but it was the destruction of the enemy, and not riches for myself, that I was seeking.  These would have fell to me, if I had had frigates:  but, except the ship of the line, I regard not all the riches in this world.  From my information off Malta, I believed they were gone to Egypt:  therefore, on the 28th, I was communicating with Alexandria, in Egypt, where I found the Turks preparing to resist