A week before, on the 13th of May, the same officer had written: "Where are you all this time?[94] for that is a point justly agitating the whole country more than I can describe. I fear that your gallant and worthy chief will have much injustice done him on this occasion, for the cry is stirring up fast against him, and the loss of Jamaica would at once sink all his past services into oblivion. All I know for certain is that we ought never to judge rashly on these occasions, and never merely by the result. Lord Barham[95] told me this morning that the Board had no tidings of your squadron. This is truly melancholy, for certainly no man's zeal and activity ever surpassed those of your chief.... The world is at once anxious for news and dreading its arrival." The Admiralty itself, perplexed and harassed by the hazards of the situation, were dissatisfied because they received no word from him, being ignorant of the weather conditions which had retarded even his frigates so far beyond the time of Villeneuve's arrival at Cadiz. Radstock, whose rank enabled him to see much of the members of the Board, drew shrewd inferences as to their feelings, though mistaken as to Nelson's action. "I fear that he has been so much soured by the appointment of Sir John Orde, that he has had the imprudence to vent his spleen on the Admiralty by a long, and, to the Board, painful silence. I am sure that they are out of humour with him, and I have my doubts whether they would risk much for him, were he to meet with any serious misfortune."
Through such difficulties in front, and such clamor in the rear, Nelson pursued his steadfast way, in anguish of spirit, but constant still in mind. "I am not made to despair," he said to Melville, "what man can do shall be done. I have marked out for myself a decided line of conduct, and I shall follow it well up; although I have now before me a letter from the physician of the fleet, enforcing my return to England before the hot months." "Brokenhearted as I am, at the escape of the Toulon fleet," he tells the governor of Gibraltar, "yet it cannot prevent my thinking of all the points intrusted 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 favorite captains; "but that I don't mind, if I can but get at them."
The wind hauling somewhat to the southward on the 5th, allowed the fleet to lay a course for Gibraltar. The operation of getting bullocks was stopped at once, and the ships weighed. In this brief stay, the water of the fleet had been completed and another transport cleared. Next day Gibraltar was reached. The wind, westerly still, though fair for this stretch, remained foul for beating out of the Straits against a current which ever sets to the eastward; and many of the officers, presuming on a continuance of the weather that had so long baffled them, hurried their washing ashore. Nelson, however, keenly vigilant and with long experience, saw indications of a change. "Off went a gun from the Victory, and up went the Blue Peter,[97] whilst the Admiral paced the deck in a hurry, with anxious steps, and impatient of a moment's delay. The officers said, 'Here is one of Nelson's mad pranks.' But he was right."[98] The wind came fair, a condition with which the great admiral never trifled. Five hours after the anchors dropped they were again at the bows, and the fleet at last standing out of the Mediterranean; the transports in tow of the ships of war. Nelson's resolve was fast forming to go to the West Indies. In fact, at Tetuan, acting upon this possibility, he had given conditional orders to Bickerton to remain in command of the Mediterranean squadron, assigning to that service half a dozen frigates and double that number of smaller cruisers, and had transferred to him all station papers necessary for his guidance,—a promptness of decision which sufficiently shows one of the chief secrets of his greatness. "If I fail," said he to Dr. Scott, "if they are not gone to the West Indies, I shall be blamed: to be burnt in effigy or Westminster Abbey is my alternative." Evidently he was not unmindful of the fickle breath of popular favor, whose fluctuations Radstock was noting. Dr. Scott, who witnessed his chief's bearing at this time, always considered that he never exhibited greater magnanimity than in this resolution, which Jurien de la Gravière also has called one of his finest inspirations.
Great, indeed, was his promptitude, alike in decision and in act; but he was no less great in his delays, in the curb he placed on his natural impetuosity. "God only knows, my dear friend," he wrote at this moment to Davison, "what I have suffered by not getting at the 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 of action. "My lot is cast, my dear Ball, and I am going to the West Indies, where, although I am late, yet chance may have given them a bad passage, and me a good one: I must hope the best." "Disappointment has worn me to a skeleton," he writes to his late junior in the Mediterranean, Campbell, "and I am in good truth, very, very far from well." "If I had not been in pursuit of the enemy's fleet, I should have been at this moment in England, but my health, or even my life, must not come into consideration at this important crisis; for, however I may be called unfortunate, it never shall be said that I have been neglectful of my duty, or spared myself." "It will not be supposed I am on a party of pleasure," he wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty, "running after eighteen sail of the line with ten, and that to the West Indies;" but, he summed up his feelings to Davison, "Salt beef and the French fleet, is far preferable to roast beef and champagne without them."
On the 10th of May only was his purpose finally and absolutely formed, for on that day he sent a sloop to Barbadoes, his intended point of arrival, to announce his coming; requesting that an embargo might be laid at once on all vessels in port, to prevent the news reaching the enemy at Martinique or elsewhere. In the morning of the 11th the fleet weighed, and at 4 P.M. the expedition from England arrived. It was accompanied by two ships-of-the-line, to which Nelson joined a third, the "Royal Sovereign," which sailed so badly, from the state of her bottom, that she would retard a movement already too long delayed. At seven that evening the fleet was under full sail for the West Indies.
The voyage across was uneventful; the ships, as customary for this passage, stood to the southward and westward into the trade winds, under whose steady impulse they advanced at a daily average speed of one hundred and thirty-five miles, or between five and six miles an hour. This rate, however, was a mean between considerable extremes,—a rate of nine miles being at times attained. The slackest winds, which brought down the average, are found before reaching the trades, and Nelson utilized this period to transmit to the fleet his general plan for action, in case he found the allies at sea. The manner in which this was conveyed to the individual ships is an interesting incident. The speed of the fleet is necessarily that of its slowest member; the faster ships, therefore, have continually a reserve, which they may at any moment bring into play. The orders being prepared, a frigate captain was called on board the "Victory" and received them. Returning to his own vessel, he made all sail until on the bow[99] of one of the ships-of-the-line. Deadening the way of the frigate, a boat was dropped in the water and had only to pull alongside the other vessel as it came up. The frigate remained slowed until passed, and the boat, having delivered its letter, came easily alongside again,—the whole operation being thus conducted with the least expenditure of time and exertion.[100]
There was in the fleet one ship that had been steadily in commission since 1801, and was now in very shaky condition. This was the "Superb," seventy-four. She had only been kept out by the extreme exertions of her commander, Keats, one of the most distinguished captains of the day, and he had entreated that he should not be sent away now, when the moment of battle seemed near. By a singular irony of fate, this zealous insistence caused him to miss Trafalgar, at which the "Royal Sovereign," that parted at Lagos, was present, repaired and recoppered,—a new ship. Keats, whose energy and readiness made him a great favorite with Nelson, obtained permission not to stop when other ships did, but always to carry a press of sail; and he lashed his studding-sail booms to the yards, as the constant direction of the trade-winds allows them to be carried steadily. Notwithstanding all that could be done, the "Superb" seems to have set the pace, and slower than could have been wished; which drew from Nelson's customary kindly thoughtfulness a few lines too characteristic to be omitted.