he
enemy's fleet;" but, in all his impatience, he would not start on that
long voyage until he had exhausted every possibility of further
enlightenment. "Perseverance _and_ patience," he said, "may do much;"
but he did not separate the one from the other, in deed or in word.
Circumspection was in him as marked a trait as ardor. "I was in great
hopes," he wrote the Admiralty, "that some of Sir John Orde's frigates
would have arrived at Gibraltar, from watching the destination of the
enemy, from whom I should have derived information of the route the
enemy had taken, but none had arrived." Up to April 27th nothing had
been heard of them at Lisbon. "I am now pushing off Cape St. Vincent,
and hope that is the station to which Sir John Orde may have directed
his frigates to return from watching the route of the enemy. If
nothing is heard there, I shall probably think the rumours which are
spread are true, that their destination is the West Indies, and in
that case think it my duty to follow them." "I am as much in the dark
as ever," he wrote on the same date, May 7th, to Nepean, one of the
puisne lords. "If I hear nothing, I shall proceed to the West Indies."

The wind continued fair for nearly forty-eight hours, when it again
became westerly; but the fleet was now in the Atlantic. On the 9th of
May the "Amazon" rejoined, bringing a letter from another ship of war,
which enclosed a report gathered from an American brig that had left
Cadiz on the 2d. According to this, while there were in Cadiz diverse
rumors as to the destination of the allied fleets, the one most
generally accepted was that they were bound to the West Indies. That
night the fleet anchored in Lagos Bay, to the eastward of Cape St.
Vincent, and the unending work of discharging transports was again
resumed. Nelson, shortly before leaving Gibraltar, had received
official notification that a convoy carrying five thousand troops was
on its way to the Mediterranean, and would depend upon him for
protection. He felt it necessary to await this in his present
position, and he utilized the time by preparing for a very long chase.

At Lagos, Rear-Admiral Campbell of the Portuguese Navy, who had served
with the British in the Mediterranean six years before, visited the
"Victory," and certain intelligence that Villeneuve was gone to the
West Indies was by him given to Nelson. The latter had now all the
confirmation needed, by such an one as he, to decide upon his line o