Felices, mediis que sedare fluctibus ausi

nec tantas timuere vias talemque secuti

huc qui deinde verum; sed sic quoque talis abito.

Happy, they who braved the intervening seas,

nor feared so long a voyage, but straightaway

followed so valiant a hero to this land; for

all that, valiant though he be, let him begone.

Argonautica, Book VII, 18-20

Gaius Valerius Flaccus

Admiral Sir John Jervis was a stocky man, just turned a spry and still energetic sixty years of age. Still quite handsome, too, for he had been a lovely youth, and had sat to Frances Cotes for a remarkable portrait once in his teens. Duty, though, and awesome responsibilities, had hunched his shoulders like some Atlas doomed to carry the Earth on his rounded back. Keeping a British fleet in the Mediterranean, such was the task that wore him down now, countering the ever-growing strength of the French Navy. Suffering the foolish decisions-or total lack of decisions-of his predecessor, the hapless Admiral Hotham, who had dithered and dallied while the French grew stronger, frittering away priceless advantages in his nail-biting fogs, merely reacting to French move and countermove, or diluting his own strength in pointless patrols or flag-visits.