The French fleet sailed during the night of March 30, with a light northeast wind, and steered a course approaching due south, in accordance with Villeneuve’s plan of going east of Minorca.  The British lookout frigates, “Active” and “Phoebe,” saw it at eight o’clock the next morning, and kept company with its slow progress till eight P.M., when, being then sixty miles south by west, true, from Toulon, the “Phoebe” was sent off to Nelson.  During the day the wind shifted for a time to the northwest.  The French then hauled up to southwest, and were heading so when darkness concealed them from the British frigates, which were not near enough for night observations.  After the “Phoebe’s” departure, the “Active” continued to steer as the enemy had been doing when last seen, but at daybreak they were no longer in sight.  Just what Villeneuve did that night does not appear; but no vessel of Nelson’s knew anything more about him till April 18th, when information was received from a chance passer that he had been seen on the 7th off Cape de Gata, on the coast of Spain, with a fresh easterly wind steering to the westward.

Villeneuve doubtless had used the night’s breeze, which was fresh, to fetch a long circuit, throw off the “Active,” and resume his course to the southward.  It was not till next day, April 1st, that he spoke a neutral, which had seen Nelson near Palmas.  Undeceived thus as to the British being off Cape San Sebastian, and the wind having then come again easterly, the French admiral kept away at once to the westward, passed north of the Balearic Islands, and on the 6th appeared off Cartagena.  The Spanish ships there refusing to join him, he pressed on, went by Gibraltar on the 8th, and on the 9th anchored off Cadiz, whence he drove away Orde’s squadron.  The “Aigle,” with six Spanish ships, joined at once, and that night the combined force, eighteen ships-of-the-line, sailed for Martinique, where it arrived on the 14th of May.  By Villeneuve’s instructions it was to remain in the West Indies till the 23d of June.

When the captain of the “Active” found he had lost sight of the French, he kept away for Nelson’s rendezvous, and joined him at 2 P.M. of April 4th, five or six hours after the “Phoebe.”  Prepossessed with the opinion that Naples, Sicily, or Egypt was the enemy’s aim, an opinion which the frigate’s news tended to confirm, Nelson at once took the fleet midway between Sardinia and the Barbary coast, spreading lookouts on either side.  Thus, without yielding ground to leeward, he covered all avenues leading to the eastward.  He summed up his purpose in words which showed an entire grasp of the essentials of his perplexing situation.  “I shall neither go to the eastward of Sicily, or to the westward of Sardinia, until I know something positive.”  Amid the diverse objects demanding his care, this choice of the strategic position was perfectly correct; but as day followed day without tidings, the distress of uncertainty, and the strain