The precise working of his thought can only be inferred.  “The whole fleet” failed to get into action.  Why?  Because the signal for a general chase was delayed from 4 to 8 A.M., pending certain drill-ground manoeuvres, upon whose results, however well intended, no dependence could be placed in Mediterranean weather.  During these four hours the wind was fresh,—­the heel of a short summer’s gale, invaluable to both sides,—­and the enemy were using it to close the shore, where wind, the sole dependence for motive power, baffles most.  Had the fastest British ships, under a competent flag-officer, utilized that time and that wind, there was, to put the case most mildly, the chance that they could repeat, upon the French rear, the same part the “Agamemnon” alone had played with the “Ca Ira,”—­and such a chance, were it no more, should not have been dawdled with.  “Missed the opportunity,”—­the fatal words, “it might have been.”  Is it far-fetched to see in his reflections upon “this miserable action,” as it is styled independently by James and himself, the forecast of the opening sentence of his celebrated order before Trafalgar?—­“Thinking it almost impossible to bring a fleet of forty sail-of-the-line[30] into a line of battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost of bringing the enemy to battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive, I have therefore made up my mind—­” Or, again, as he saw Man dragged off—­with too little remonstrance, it may be—­by a superior, who could by no means see what was the state of the action, is there not traceable a source of the feeling, partly inborn, partly reasoned, that found expression in the generous and yet most wise words of the same immortal order?—­“The second in command will [in fact command his line and],[31] after my intentions are made known to him, have the entire direction of his line to make the attack upon the enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or destroyed.”  Whether such words be regarded as the labored result of observation and reflection, or whether as the flashes of intuition, with which genius penetrates at once to the root of a matter, without the antecedent processes to which lesser minds are subjected,—­in either case they are instructive when linked with the events of his career here under discussion, as corroborative indications of natural temperament and insight, which banish altogether the thought of mere fortuitous valor as the one explanation of Nelson’s successes.

With this unsatisfactory affair, Nelson’s direct connection with the main body of the fleet came to an end for the remainder of Hotham’s command.  It is scarcely necessary to add that the prime object of the British fleet at all times, and not least in the Mediterranean in 1795,—­the control of the sea,—­continued as doubtful as it had been at the beginning of the year.  The dead