e vessel was spoken which
informed him that she had seen the French off Cape de Gata, three
hundred miles to the westward, ten days before. "If this account is
true," he wrote to Elliot, "much mischief may be apprehended. It
kills me, the very thought." Yet, now that the call for decision
sounds, he knows no faltering, nor does he, as in hours of reaction,
fret himself about the opinions of others. "I am going out of the
Mediterranean," he says in farewell. "It may be thought that I have
protected too well Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, the Morea, and Egypt; but
I feel I have done right, and am, therefore, easy about any fate which
may await me for having missed the French fleet."

The following day a vessel joined from Gibraltar, with certain
information that the enemy had passed the Straits. Nelson had no need
to ponder the next step. His resolve had been taken long before to
follow to the Antipodes. He comforted himself, mistakenly, that his
watchfulness was the cause that the French had abandoned the attempt
against Egypt in force. "Under the severe affliction which I feel at
the escape of the French fleet out of the Mediterranean," he wrote the
Admiralty, "I hope that their Lordships will not impute it to any want
of due attention on my part; but, on the contrary, that by my
vigilance the enemy found it was impossible to undertake any
expedition in the Mediterranean." Mindful, also, that Bonaparte's
great attempt of 1798 had depended upon the absence of the British
fleet, he left a squadron of five frigates to cruise together to the
windward of Sicily, lest the French even now might try to send
transports with troops to the eastward, under the protection of small
armed vessels.

The number of letters written on the 18th and 19th of April show how
thoroughly his mind was prepared for contingencies. Despatched, in all
directions, they outline his own intended course, for the information
of those who might have to co-operate, as well as that which he wished
to be pursued by the officers under his orders. They are issued neat
and complete, at one cast, and no other follows for a week. He
surmises, from the fact of the Spanish ships accompanying the
movement, that it is directed, not against the West Indies, but for
either Ireland or Brest; not a bad "guess," which is all he would have
claimed for it, for the West Indies were actually only a
rallying-point on the roundabout road to the Channel prescribed by
Napoleon. "The