Fixed in his mind to return to his command in October, he soon felt that, in the uncertainties of the French movements, a call might come at any moment.  Although he nowhere says so, his mind was doubtless made up that, if Villeneuve’s twenty-nine sail went to, or near, the Mediterranean, he would go out at once.  “Every ship,” he writes on the 31st of August, “even the Victory, is ordered out, for there is an entire ignorance whether the Ferrol fleet is coming to the northward, gone to the Mediterranean, or cruizing for our valuable homeward-bound fleet.”  “Mr. Pitt,” he tells a friend as early as the 29th, “is pleased to think that my services may be wanted.  I hope Calder’s victory (which I am most anxiously expecting) will render my going forth unnecessary.”  “I hold myself ready,” he writes again on the 3d of September, “to go forth whenever I am desired, although God knows I want rest; but self is entirely out of the question."[115]

It was not, therefore, to a mind or will unprepared that the sudden intimation came on the 2d of September—­just a fortnight after he left the “Victory.”  That morning there arrived in town Captain Blackwood of the frigate “Euryalus,” which had been despatched by Collingwood to notify the Admiralty that the missing Villeneuve had turned up with his squadron at Cadiz, on the 20th of August.  Blackwood was an old friend and follower.  It was he who had commanded the “Penelope” in March, 1800, and more than any one present had insured the capture of the “Guillaume Tell,” when she ran out from Malta,[116]—­the greatest service, probably, rendered to Nelson’s reputation by any man who ever sailed under his orders.  He stopped first at Merton at five o’clock in the morning, and found Nelson already up and dressed.  The latter said at once, “I am sure you bring me news of the French and Spanish fleets, and I think I shall yet have to beat them.”  Later in the day he called at the Admiralty, and there saw Blackwood again.  In the course of conversation, which turned chiefly upon future operations in the Mediterranean, he frequently repeated, “Depend on it, Blackwood, I shall yet give Mr. Villeneuve a drubbing,” an expression whose wording evinces animation and resolve,—­far removed from the troubled indecision from which, by her own account, Lady Hamilton freed him.

It was speedily determined by the Government that the combined fleets in Cadiz should be held there, or forced to fight if they left; the country had passed through a fortnight of too great anxiety, to risk any chance of its repetition by a renewed evasion.  Ignorant of the reasons which dictated Villeneuve’s course, and that it was not accordant but contrary to his orders, it was natural to suppose that there was some further object indicated by the position now taken, and that that object was the Mediterranean.  Moreover, so large a body of commissioned ships—­nearly forty—­as were now assembled, could not fail to tax severely the resources of a port like Cadiz,