"I, Madam? I should not have sufficient ships to await an action if the Brest fleet gets in the Mediterranean. Some of my ships are at Alexandria, some at Malta, others at Naples, Leghorn and Palermo. Alexandria ought to be off my hands; the Russian and Turkish Admiral should have been there some months ago. I ought not to need a ship east of Kandia. These Russians mean no good; I don't trust them. They are far more anxious to seize ports in the Mediterranean for their own future use than to fight the French. They have got Corfu, and they have their eye on Malta, their excuse being that their Emperor is Grand Master of St. John, elected by those rascally Knights, who unlocked the gates of Valetta for the French--a place the French could never have unlocked from the outside, even if it had been empty. The Ottoman Admiral is sailing about with the Russian, helping him to seize points, which will afterwards be used against the Grand Signor. The good Turk must look out, or he will find it cheaper to come to terms with his enemy the French, rather than be sucked dry by his ally the Russian. The Russian will never be content until he has Constantinople, and as for the French in this present war they may go hang. Russia is too far off to have anything to fear for itself; and its Emperor is only moving so as to fish in the troubled waters. Otherwise they would have gone to Alexandria as I have written, and entreated, over and over. They could have what bombs and gun-vessels they want; and I fear by this it is too late to destroy the shipping in Alexandria, which the French have been steadily fortifying, while the day after the Nile, with a handful of bombs and small craft, I could have destroyed the whole in a couple of hours." "Captain Sir Sidney Smith may do something. He is a good officer, isn't he?" "He's a coxcomb and an impertinent rascal, though he could be trusted to fight if he found himself in an action. But he's cursed with an idea that he is a diplomatist, in which he has unfortunately been encouraged by our foolish Government, who have joined him in a commission with his brother, the Minister at Constantinople, because he knows a little of the Turk and his lingo." "But surely that is an advantage?" "No advantage, Madam, when the jumping Jack has not the sense or manners to keep his commission as a diplomatist, and his commission as a captain under my orders apart, but mixes them up in every dispatch, so much that I ought not to read them, but tear them up for the most insubordinate language ever addressed by a Captain to an Admiral. You know that if there is one thing upon which I have set my mind in the whole Mediterranean, it is this." "I don't know what you refer to--this is the very first mention."