hould not
be visible to either friend or enemy, he had gone to the Gulf of
Lyons. There a small French corvette, just out of Toulon, was captured
on the 17th, but, except in unimportant details, yielded no
information additional to that already possessed. On the 19th
Bonaparte sailed with all the vessels gathered in Toulon, directing
his course to the eastward, to pass near Genoa, and afterwards between
Corsica and the mainland of Italy. On the night of the 20th, in a
violent gale of wind, the "Vanguard" rolled overboard her main and
mizzen topmasts, and later on the foremast went, close to the deck.
The succession of these mishaps points rather to spars badly secured
and cared for than to unavoidable accident. Fortunately, the "Orion"
and "Alexander" escaped injury, and the latter, on the following
morning, took the "Vanguard" in tow, to go to Oristan Bay, in
Sardinia. The situation became extremely dangerous on the evening of
the 22d, for, the wind falling light, the sail-power of the
"Alexander" was scarcely sufficient to drag both ships against a
heavy westerly swell which was setting them bodily upon the Sardinian
coast, then not far distant. Thinking the case hopeless, Nelson
ordered the "Alexander" to let go the hawser; but Captain Ball begged
permission to hold on, and finally succeeded in saving the flagship,
which, on the 23d, anchored with her consorts under the Islands of San
Pietro, at the southern extremity of Sardinia. The governor of the
place sent word that they must not remain, Sardinia being allied to
France, but added that, as he had no power to force them out, they
would doubtless do as they pleased; and he supplied them with fresh
provisions,--a line of conduct which illustrates at once the
restrictions imposed upon British operations in the Mediterranean by
French insistence, and at the same time the readiness of the weaker
states to connive at the evasion of them, other instances of which
occurred during this period. By the united efforts of the division,
four days sufficed to refit the "Vanguard" with jury-masts, and the
three ships again sailed, on the 27th, for an appointed rendezvous, to
seek the frigates, which had separated during and after the gale.

This severe check, occurring at so critical a moment,--more critical
even than Nelson knew, for he remained ignorant of the French sailing
for some days longer,--was in itself disheartening, and fell upon one
whose native eagerness chafed pai