t seven the
next morning the squadron was under way; the "Agamemnon," which had
two hundred tons of ordnance stores to unload, sailing only half an
hour after her less encumbered consorts, whom she soon overtook.

Hood shaped his course for Calvi, being constrained thereto, not only
by the rumor of the enemy's destination, but also by the military
necessity of effecting a junction with the rest of his fleet. Admiral
Hotham, who commanded the British division of seven ships in front of
Toulon, instead of waiting to verify the report brought to him of the
enemy's force,--which was actually the same, numerically, as his
own,--bore up hastily for Calvi, intending, so wrote Nelson at the
time, to fight them there, rather than that they should throw in
succors. Whatever their numbers, thus to surrender touch of them at
the beginning was an evident mistake, for which, as for most mistakes,
a penalty had in the end to be paid; and in fact, if the relief of
Calvi was the object of the sortie, the place to fight was evidently
as far from there as possible. Off Toulon, even had Hotham been
beaten, his opponents would have been too roughly handled to carry out
their mission. As it was, this precipitate retirement lost the British
an opportunity for a combat that might have placed their control of
the sea beyond peradventure; and a few months later, Nelson, who at
first had viewed Hotham's action with the generous sympathy and
confident pride which always characterized his attitude towards his
brother officers, showed how clearly he was reading in the book of
experience the lessons that should afterwards stand himself in good
stead. "When 'Victory' is gone," he wrote, "we shall be thirteen sail
of the line [to the French fifteen], when the enemy will keep our new
Commanding Officer [Hotham] in hot water, who missed, unfortunately,
the opportunity of fighting them, last June." Ten years later, in his
celebrated chase of Villeneuve's fleet, he said to his captains: "If
we meet the enemy we shall find them not less than eighteen, I rather
think twenty, sail of the line, and therefore do not be surprised if I
should not fall on them immediately [he had but eleven]--_we won't
part_[23] without a battle;" and he expressed with the utmost decision
his clear appreciation that even a lost battle, if delivered at the
right point or at the right moment, would frustrate the ulterior
objects of the enemy, by crippling the force upon which they d