now so very uncivil to our ships, that I suppose we shall not be much longer friends.” To John Hookham Frere, _Chargé d’Affaires_ at Madrid, he admits, “We have given up French vessels taken within gun-shot of the Spanish shore, and yet French vessels are permitted to attack our ships from the Spanish shore. Your Excellency may assure the Spanish Government, that in whatever place the Spaniards allow the French to attack us, in that place I shall order the French to be attacked. The old order of 1771, now put in force against us, is infamous; and I trust your Excellency will take proper steps that the present mode of enforcing it be done away. It is gross partiality, and not neutrality.” There is a pathetic letter dated the 12th December 1803 in which Nelson confides to his old friend Davison some of the perils which he encountered daily. “My crazy fleet,” he writes, “are getting in a very indifferent state, and others will soon follow. The finest ships in the service will soon be destroyed. I know well enough that if I was to go into Malta, I should save the ships during this bad season. But if I am to watch the French, I must be at sea, and if at sea, must have bad weather; and if the ships are not fit to stand bad weather, they are useless.... But my time of service is nearly over. A natural anxiety, of course, must attend my station; but, my dear friend, my eyesight fails me most dreadfully. I firmly believe that, in a very few years, I shall be stone-blind. It is this only, of all my maladies, that makes me unhappy; but God’s will be done.” Nelson had taken up his station “to the westward of Sicie,” a position enabling him “to prevent the junction of a Spanish fleet from the westward,” and also “to take shelter in a few hours either under the Hières Islands or Cape St Sebastian; and I have hitherto found the advantage of the position. Now Spain, having settled her neutrality”--he is writing on the 12th December to Lord St Vincent--“I am taking my winter’s station under St Sebastian, to avoid the heavy seas in the gulf, and keep frigates off Toulon. From September we have experienced such a series of bad weather that is rarely met with, and I am sorry to say that all the ships which have been from England in the late war severely feel it.... I know no way of watching the enemy but to be at sea, and therefore good ships are necessary.” On the same day he informs a third correspondent that the enemy at Toulon “are perfectly ready to put to sea, and they must soon come out, but who shall [say] where they are bound? My opinion is, certainly out of the Mediterranean.” “We have had a most terrible winter: it has almost knocked me up,” he tells Elliot within a few days of the close of this anxious year. “I have been very ill, and am now far from recovered, but I hope to hold out till the battle is over, when I must recruit myself for some future exertion.” An Indomitable Spirit this, the greatest sailor of all time! CHAPTER XVIII