return.  He recognized, moreover, the great significance of their inactivity during the three weeks they had the Windward Islands, if not all the West Indies, defenceless before them.  “If they were not able to make an attack for three weeks after their arrival, they could not hope for greater success after our means of resistance increased, and their means of offence were diminished.”  If this consideration, on the one hand, showed the improbability of their proceeding against Jamaica, after Nelson’s coming, when they had not ventured before, it gave also an inkling of their probable efficiency for immediate action in Europe.  “They will not give me credit for quitting the West Indies for a month to come;” therefore it was unlikely that they would think it necessary to proceed at once upon their next enterprise, after reaching port.  “I must not despair of getting up with them before they enter the Straits,” he writes Elliot.  “At least, they will have no time to carry any of their future plans into execution, and do harm to any of the countries under my charge.”  If his thirst for glory was unslaked, his fears of disaster had disappeared.

Villeneuve, guided by instructions recently received from Napoleon, to meet the case of the Brest squadron not getting away, had gone actually for Ferrol, where he was to join a squadron of five French and nine Spanish ships, which would raise his own force to thirty-four of the line; but Nelson, unable to know this, argued correctly that, in the uncertainty, he must leave this chance to the Biscay ships, and that for himself the Mediterranean possessed the first claim.  At noon of June 13th, nine days after reaching Barbadoes, he got away from Antigua.  The necessity for gaining the westerly winds made his course for some time the same as that of Villeneuve, and left him not without hopes that he might yet fall in with the allies, especially if, as he thought, they were destined to the Straits.  On the 17th an American schooner was spoken, which had seen the combined squadron two days before, steering also to the northward.  This report, wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, “can leave me no room to doubt but that I am hard upon the heels of the enemy’s fleet.  I think we cannot be more than eighty leagues from them at this moment, and by carrying every sail, and using my utmost efforts, I shall hope to close with them before they get to either Cadiz or Toulon.”  The news was sent ahead by two vessels, which parted from the fleet on the 19th of June,—­one for Gibraltar, with despatches and letters for the admiral and ministers in the Mediterranean; one for Lisbon, whence this important intelligence would be forwarded to England and to the commanding officer off Ferrol.  Still believing them bound for the Straits, Nelson expressed in the fleet the opinion that they would keep well to the southward of the Azores, so as not to be seen by British cruisers centred there.  In this he was mistaken, as he was in their final destination; both fleets sighted