of Cape Carbonara, the southeastern point of Sardinia.  At 11 A.M. her captain informed Nelson that the afternoon before he had seen a French frigate standing into the Gulf of Cagliari, but, the weather being thick, giving an horizon of only three miles, nothing more had been discovered.  The admiral had sent word of the French sailing to Acton at Palermo, and through him to Naples and Malta, Ball being requested to seek for information in every practicable direction.  Naples was for the moment safe, as the British squadron stood across any possible road by which the French could approach it.

The gale, hauling gradually to the westward, lasted in its force until the morning of January 25th.  During these three days Nelson received no news, but he did much thinking and had made up his mind.  The French might be intending to land in Cagliari, to windward of which they had been during these four days that he had been to leeward.  With Cagliari, therefore, he must communicate; the Viceroy of Sardinia would know if any landing had been attempted or threatened.  If Sardinia was safe, he would next go or send to Palermo for news, and thence push for the Faro of Messina, where he would cover both that important fortress and the approaches to Naples from either side of Sicily.  “You will believe my anxiety,” he wrote to Acton in Palermo, on the 25th.  “I have neither ate, drank, or slept with any comfort since last Sunday” (the 20th).  “I am naturally very anxious,” he tells Ball, “therefore you must forgive my short letter.  We have a dead foul wind and heavy sea.  I cannot, for want of frigates, send off this letter.”  The lack of small cruisers; so often lamented in quieter days, now embarrassed him cruelly.  The few he had were dispersed in all directions in search of news, and to communicate with Acton he had to detach one of his fastest ships-of-the-line, the “Leviathan,” intending himself to follow her with the fleet to Palermo.  At the latter point he could obtain all the intelligence of the common enemy which might have reached any Sicilian port, before he carried out his already formed purpose of chasing to leeward, to the Morea and Egypt.  With firm grip, though in agony of mind, he held himself in hand, determined, burning as he was to pursue somewhere, not to yield the advantage of the wind till he had reached a reasonable certainty—­as in 1798—­that the circumstances justified it.  “I hope,” he says to Acton, “that the governor of Augusta[84] will not give up the post to the French fleet; but if he does, I shall go in and attack them; for I consider the destruction of the enemy’s fleet of so much consequence, that I would gladly have half of mine burnt to effect their destruction.  I am in a fever.  God send I may find them!” Throughout the long chase which followed, all, so to say, slept on their arms.  On the 11th of March he wrote:  “Ever since January 21st we have been prepared for battle:  not a bulkhead[85] up in the fleet.  Night or day, it is my determination not to lose one moment in attacking them.”