pursuit, was known in England, had taken his
station off Cadiz. He thought that Ireland was the enemy's ultimate
object; that they would now liberate the Ferrol squadron, which was
blocked up by Sir Robert Calder, call for the Rochefort ships, and then
appear off Ushant with 33 or 34 sail; there to be joined: by the
Brest fleet. With this great force he supposed they would make for
Ireland--the real mark and bent of all their operations; and their
flight to the West Indies, he thought, had been merely undertaken
to take off Nelson's force, which was the great impediment to their
undertaking.

Collingwood was gifted with great political penetration. As yet,
however, all was conjecture concerning the enemy; and Nelson, having
victualled and watered at Tetuan, stood for Ceuta on the 24th, still
without information of their course. Next day intelligence arrived that
the CURIEUX brig had seen them on the 19th, standing to the northward.
He proceeded off Cape St. Vincent, rather cruising for intelligence than
knowing whither to betake himself; and here a case occurred that more
than any other event in real history resembles those whimsical proofs of
sagacity which Voltaire, in his Zadig, has borrowed from the Orientals.
One of our frigates spoke an American, who, a little to the westward
of the Azores, had fallen in with an armed vessel, appearing to be a
dismasted privateer, deserted by her crew, which had been run on board
by another ship, and had been set fire to; but the fire had gone out. A
log-book and a few seamen's jackets were found in the cabin; and these
were brought to Nelson. The log-book closed with these words: "Two large
vessels in the W.N.W.:" and this led him to conclude that the vessel had
been an English privateer, cruising off the Western Islands. But there
was in this book a scrap of dirty paper, filled with figures. Nelson,
immediately upon seeing it, observed that the figures were written by a
Frenchman; and after studying this for a while, said, "I can explain
the whole. The jackets are of French manufacture, and prove that the
privateer was in possession of the enemy. She had been chased and taken
by the two ships that were seen in the W.N.W. The prizemaster, going on
board in a hurry, forgot to take with him his reckoning: there is none
in the log-book; and the dirty paper contains her work for the number of
days since the privateer last left Corvo; with an unaccounted-for run,
which I take to have