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When the tides were at their spring, and the year 1802 of our era in the same condition, Horatia Dorothy Darling, younger daughter of the aforesaid Admiral, choosing a very quiet path among thick shrubs and under-wood, came all alone to a wooden building, which her father called his Round-house.
Receive, my dearest Horatia, the affectionate parental blessing of your Father, The 20th of October opened with fresh breezes from south-southwest and heavy rains. At daybreak the British fleet was near the Straits' mouth, between Capes Trafalgar and Spartel, unable to see anything, but certain that, with the existing winds, the enemy could not have anticipated it there.
Nelson availed himself of Blackwood's presence to have him, together with Hardy, witness his signature to a paper, in which he bequeathed Lady Hamilton and the child Horatia to the care of the nation, and which consequently has been styled a Codicil to his Will.
There was Doctor Tio-King, his Cornaro under his arm; Fulk Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett, mingling their teeth and hair, figuratively, be it understood; Sir Francis Trevellyan, motionless and silent, intractable and stiff, smoking his cigar on the threshold; Faruskiar, accompanied by Ghangir; Russian, Turkoman, Chinese travelers in all from sixty to eighty persons.
What astonishes me is that the proprietor of this little book does not seem to read it from right to left. Is it not written in Chinese characters? We must see into this! On two adjoining seats are Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett. Their talk is of nothing but figures.
It was true; life was fast ebbing. "Doctor," he said to the chaplain, "I have not been a great sinner." He was silent a moment, and then continued, "Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." Words now came with difficulty. "Thank God, I have done my duty," he said, repeating these words again and again. They were his last words.
Then, turning, she said: "I have no time to wait, Mr. Ephrinell." "Nor have I, Mrs. Ephrinell," replied the Yankee. Mr.! Mrs.! And not so long ago they were calling each other Fulk and Horatia. And then, without taking each other's arm, they walked out of the station. I believe he turned to the right and she to the left; but that is their affair.
By the first of February the "San Josef" had gone round to Torbay, the rendezvous of the Channel fleet under St. Vincent's command, and there it was that Nelson received the news of the birth, on the 29th or 30th of January, of the child Horatia, whose parentage for a long time gave rise to much discussion, and is even yet considered by some a matter of doubt.
He anticipates, as her other lovers had done, that she can be very angry, like Horatia, when she cannot have her own way, but he soothingly says that he knows his own dear Emma, if she applies her reason, will see that he is right. He playfully adds an addendum that "Horatia is like her mother, she will have her own way, or kick up the devil of a dust."
In reality, it rather points to the idea that it was intended not only as a further farewell to mother and child, but as an historical epistle and a legacy to Horatia which she would read in other days in connection with the great battle in which he was to be engaged only a few hours after he had written it.
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