This important and most opportune arrival came about as follows.  Anchoring on the 19th of July at Gibraltar, Nelson found everything ready for the re-equipment of his ships, owing to his foresight in directing it.  All set to work at once to prepare for immediate departure.  When I have “completed the fleet to four months’ provisions, and with stores for Channel service,” he wrote to the Admiralty, “I shall get outside the Mediterranean, leaving a sufficient force to watch Carthagena, and proceed as upon a due consideration, (on reading Vice-Admiral Collingwood’s orders, and those which Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Bickerton may have received during my absence,) may suggest to be most proper.  Should I hear that the enemy are gone to some of the ports in the Bay, I shall join the squadron off Ferrol, or off Ushant, as I think the case requires.”  There will be observed here the same striking combination of rapidity, circumspection, and purpose prepared by reflection for instant action in emergencies, that characterized him usually, and especially in these four months of chase.  “The squadron is in the most perfect health,” he continues, “except some symptoms of scurvy, which I hope to eradicate by bullocks and refreshments from Tetuan, to which I will proceed to-morrow.”  The getting fresh beef at Tetuan, it will be remembered, had been stopped by a fair wind on the 5th of May.  Since then, and in fact since a month earlier, no opportunity of obtaining fresh provisions had offered during his rapid movements.  “The fleet received not the smallest refreshment, not even a cup of water in the West Indies,” he told the Queen of Naples.  The admiral himself got only a few sheep, in the nine days’ round.

Even now, the intention to go to Tetuan, advisable as the step was, was contingent upon the opportunity offering of reaching a position whence he could move with facility.  Nelson did not mean to be back-strapped again within the Mediterranean, with a west wind, and a current setting to leeward, if the enemy turned up in the Atlantic.  “If the wind is westerly,” he wrote on the early morning of the 22d, “I shall go to Tetuan:  if easterly, out of the straits.”  At half-past nine that day the fleet weighed, and at half-past seven in the evening anchored at Tetuan, whither orders had already gone to prepare bullocks and fresh vegetables for delivery.  At noon of the 23d the ships again lifted their anchors, and started.  “The fleet is complete,” he wrote the First Lord that day, “and the first easterly wind, I shall pass the Straits.”  Fortune apparently had made up her mind now to balk him no more.  Thirty-six hours later, at 3.30 A.M. of July 25th, being then off Tarifa, a little west of Gibraltar, the sloop-of-war “Termagant,” one of his own Mediterranean cruisers, came alongside, and brought him a newspaper, received from Lisbon, containing an account of the report carried to England by the “Curieux.”  “I know it’s true,” he wrote to the Admiralty, “from