squadron, which sailed at the time Villeneuve first escaped in January, had since returned to Europe on the 26th of May.  “The flight to the West Indies,” Collingwood said, in a letter dated the day after the one just quoted, “was to take off our naval force, which is the great impediment to their undertaking.  The Rochefort Squadron’s return confirmed me.”  “I well know what your lordship’s disappointment is,” he wrote, with generous sympathy; “and I share the mortification of it.  It would have been a happy day for England, could you have met them; small as your force was, I trust it would have been found enough.  This summer is big with events.  Sincerely I wish your Lordship strength of body to go through—­and to all others, your strength of mind.”  Testy even to petulance as these two great seamen were at times in small matters, when overwrought with their manifold anxieties, they nowhere betray any egotistic concern as to the value attached by others to their respective speculations, the uncertainties of which none knew better than they, who had to act upon their conclusions.

Meantime, at the very moment they were exchanging letters, pregnant movements were taking place, unknown to either.  The brig “Curieux,” despatched to England by Nelson the night before he left Antigua, had fallen in with the allied squadrons, nine hundred miles north-northeast from Antigua, on the 19th of June—­just a week after she sailed.  Keeping company with them long enough to ascertain their course and approximate numbers, the captain then hastened on, anchoring in Plymouth on the 7th of July.  “I am sorry,” wrote Nelson when he heard of this meeting, “that Captain Bettesworth did not stand back and try to find us out;” but grateful as the word would have been to him, the captain was better advised to make for a fixed and certain destination.  At daylight of the 9th the news was in the hands of the First Lord, who issued instant orders for the blockading squadrons off Rochefort and Ferrol to unite, and to take post one hundred miles west of Cape Finisterre.  On the 19th of July Admiral Calder was in this position, with fifteen ships-of-the-line, and received through Lisbon the information of the French movements, which Nelson had forwarded thither an exact month before.  On the 20th Nelson’s fleet anchored at Gibraltar, and he went ashore, “for the first time since the 16th of June, 1803.”  On the 22d Calder and Villeneuve met and fought.  Two Spanish ships-of-the-line were captured, but the battle was otherwise indecisive.  Calder hesitated to attack again, and on the 26th lost sight of the enemy, who, on the 28th, put into Vigo Bay; whence, by a lucky slant of wind, they reached Ferrol on the first of August with fifteen ships, having left three in Vigo.  Calder sent five of his fleet to resume the blockade of Rochefort, and himself with nine joined Cornwallis off Brest, raising the force there to twenty-six.  This junction was made August 14th.  The next day appeared there the indefatigable Nelson, with his unwearied and ever ready squadron of eleven ships—­veterans in the highest sense of the word, in organization, practice, and endurance; alert, and solid as men of iron.