d to my care,
amongst which Gibraltar stands prominent." "My good fortune seems
flown away," he cries out to Ball. "I cannot get a fair wind, or even
a side wind. Dead foul!--dead foul! But my mind is fully made up what
to do when I leave the Straits, supposing there is no certain
information of the enemy's destination. I believe this ill-luck will
go near to kill me; but as these are times for exertions, I must not
be cast down, whatever I feel." A week later, on the 26th of April, he
complains: "From the 9th I have been using every effort to get down
the Mediterranean, but to this day we are very little advanced. From
March 26th, we have had nothing like a Levanter,[96] except for the
French fleet. I have never been one week without one, until this very
important moment. It has half killed me; but fretting is of no use."
On the 1st of May he wrote to the Admiralty, "I have as yet heard
nothing of the enemy;" beyond, of course, the fact of their having
passed the Straits.

On the 4th of May the squadron was off Tetuan, on the African coast, a
little east of Gibraltar, and, as the wind was too foul for progress,
Nelson, ever watchful over supplies, determined to stop for water and
fresh beef, which the place afforded. There he was joined by the
frigate "Decade" from Gibraltar, and for the first time, apparently,
received a rumor that the allied fleets had gone to the West Indies.
He complains, certainly not unreasonably, and apparently not unjustly,
that Sir John Orde, who had seen the French arrive off Cadiz, had not
dogged their track and ascertained their route; a feat certainly not
beyond British seamanship and daring, under the management of a dozen
men that could be named off-hand. "I believe my ill luck is to go on
for a longer time, and I now much fear that Sir John Orde has not sent
his small ships to watch the enemy's fleet, and ordered them to return
to the Straits mouth, to give me information, that I might know how to
direct my proceedings: for I cannot very properly run to the West
Indies, without something beyond mere surmise; and if I defer my
departure, Jamaica may be lost. Indeed, as they have a month's start
of me, I see no prospect of getting out time enough to prevent much
mischief from being done. However, I shall take all matters into my
most serious consideration, and shall do that which seemeth best under
all circumstances." "I am like to have a West India trip," he wrote to
Keats, one of his f