l might come
at any moment. Although he nowhere says so, his mind was doubtless
made up that, if Villeneuve's twenty-nine sail went to, or near, the
Mediterranean, he would go out at once. "Every ship," he writes on the
31st of August, "even the Victory, is ordered out, for there is an
entire ignorance whether the Ferrol fleet is coming to the northward,
gone to the Mediterranean, or cruizing for our valuable homeward-bound
fleet." "Mr. Pitt," he tells a friend as early as the 29th, "is
pleased to think that my services may be wanted. I hope Calder's
victory (which I am most anxiously expecting) will render my going
forth unnecessary." "I hold myself ready," he writes again on the 3d
of September, "to go forth whenever I am desired, although God knows
I want rest; but self is entirely out of the question."[115]

It was not, therefore, to a mind or will unprepared that the sudden
intimation came on the 2d of September--just a fortnight after he left
the "Victory." That morning there arrived in town Captain Blackwood of
the frigate "Euryalus," which had been despatched by Collingwood to
notify the Admiralty that the missing Villeneuve had turned up with
his squadron at Cadiz, on the 20th of August. Blackwood was an old
friend and follower. It was he who had commanded the "Penelope" in
March, 1800, and more than any one present had insured the capture of
the "Guillaume Tell," when she ran out from Malta,[116]--the greatest
service, probably, rendered to Nelson's reputation by any man who ever
sailed under his orders. He stopped first at Merton at five o'clock in
the morning, and found Nelson already up and dressed. The latter said
at once, "I am sure you bring me news of the French and Spanish
fleets, and I think I shall yet have to beat them." Later in the day
he called at the Admiralty, and there saw Blackwood again. In the
course of conversation, which turned chiefly upon future operations in
the Mediterranean, he frequently repeated, "Depend on it, Blackwood, I
shall yet give Mr. Villeneuve a drubbing," an expression whose wording
evinces animation and resolve,--far removed from the troubled
indecision from which, by her own account, Lady Hamilton freed him.

It was speedily determined by the Government that the combined fleets
in Cadiz should be held there, or forced to fight if they left; the
country had passed through a fortnight of too great anxiety, to risk
any chance of its repetition by a renewed evasion. Ignor