the admiral at once pushed on for Cape Corso, the
north point of Corsica, intending to pass between the island and
Italy, seeking information as he went. The "Mutine" was all he had to
replace the missing frigates.

June 7th thus marks the beginning of a chase, which ended only upon
the 1st of August in the Battle of the Nile. During this miserable
period of suspense and embarrassment, occasioned and prolonged beyond
all reason or necessity by the want of lookout ships, the connecting
and illuminating thread is the purpose of Nelson, at once clear and
firm, to find the French fleet and to fight it the instant found. No
other consideration draws his mind aside, except so far as it may
facilitate the attainment and fulfilment of this one object. In this
one light he sees all things. At the start he writes to St. Vincent:
"You may be assured I will fight them the moment I can reach, be they
at anchor or under sail." Three days later, he tells Sir William
Hamilton: "If their fleet is not moored in as strong a port as Toulon,
nothing shall hinder me from attacking them." "Be they bound to the
Antipodes," he says to Earl Spencer, "your Lordship may rely that I
will not lose a moment in bringing them to action, and endeavour to
destroy their transports." Such expressions are repeated with a
frequency which proves the absolute hold the resolution had upon his
mind. When obstacles occur to him, or are mentioned, they do not make
room for the thought of not fighting to be entertained; only Toulon
suggests the idea of impossibility. He raises difficulties diligently
enough, but it is only that they may be the better overcome, not that
they may deter. All possible conditions are considered and discussed,
but simply in order that the best fighting solution may be reached.
The constant mental attitude is such that the man is unprepared to
recede before any opposition; he fortifies his mind beforehand with
the best means of meeting and vanquishing it, but the attempt at least
shall be made. "Thank God," he wrote at this moment, "I do not feel
difficulties;" yet the avowal itself accompanies so plain a statement
of his embarrassments as to show that his meaning is that they do not
discourage. This characteristic appeared most strongly at Copenhagen,
partly because the difficulties there were greatest, partly from the
close contrast with a man of very different temper.

Being entirely without intelligence as to the real object of the