if found there.  A seventh vessel was sent ahead of the squadron to Koron, off which he appeared on the 2d of February, and, still getting no news, went on to Alexandria, where he communicated with the British consul on the 7th.  “I beg the boat may not be detained, nor must any communication be had with the officer, so as to put the ship in quarantine.  The officer is ordered not to wait more than thirty minutes; for you will readily believe my anxiety to find out the enemy’s fleet.”  No news was to be had; but it was ascertained that Egypt was practically defenceless against any renewed attempts of the French.

Nelson at once started back to the westward.  On the 19th of February, twelve days after leaving Alexandria, he was off Malta, and there for the first time received information that the enemy had returned to Toulon in a very crippled state.  It was now necessary to regain his station as speedily as possible, and also to resume the operation of victualling the squadron, which had been interrupted at Madalena by the news of the enemy’s sailing.  The captain left there in charge of the transports had taken them for safety to Malta, in pursuance of the orders left with him, and they would have to be convoyed again to the Gulf of Palmas, which was appointed for their joining.  The incident shows at once the forehandedness of Nelson, in that he was able immediately to go on so long a chase, and also the difficulties attendant upon the administration of the fleet.  Against the prevailing winds the convoy did not reach Palmas until the 14th of March.  The fleet had preceded it there by a week.  After a tedious beat, in which eight days were consumed to make the three hundred and fifty miles to windward, Nelson anchored on the 27th of February in Pula Roads, Gulf of Cagliari, just to hold on.  “What weather!” wrote he to Bickerton, when the anchor dropped.  “Did you ever see such in almost any country?  It has forced me to anchor here, in order to prevent being drove to leeward, but I shall go to sea the moment it moderates.”  Palmas is only forty miles to windward of Pula, but it was not till the 8th of March, after three or four ineffectual efforts, that the squadron got there.  “From the 19th of February to this day,” wrote Nelson to Ball, “have we been beating, and only now going to anchor here as it blows a gale of wind at northwest.  It has been without exception, the very worst weather I have ever seen.”  Bad as it was, it was but a sample of that he was to meet a month later, in the most wearing episode of his anxious life.

Besides the weary struggle with foul winds and weather, other great disappointments and vexations met Nelson at Palmas.  During his absence to the eastward, one despatch vessel had been wrecked off Cadiz and fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, another had been intercepted by the battered French fleet as it approached Toulon, and a convoy, homeward-bound from Malta, had been waylaid, the two small ships of war