Where was Nelson? His scout frigates by bad judgment had lost Villeneuve on the night of March 31 east of Minorca, with no clue to his future course. Nelson took station between Sardinia and the African coast, resolved not to move till he "knew something positive." In the absence of information, the safety of Naples, Sicily, and Egypt was perhaps not merely an obsession on his part, but a proper professional concern; but it is strange that no inkling should have reached him from the Admiralty or elsewhere that a western movement from Toulon was the only one Napoleon now had in mind. It was April 18 before he received further news of the enemy, and not until May 5 was he able to get up to and through the Straits against steady head winds; even then he could not, as he said, "run to the West Indies without something beyond mere surmise." Definite reports from Cadiz that the enemy had gone thither reached him through an Admiral Campbell in the Portuguese service, and were confirmed by the fact that they had been seen nowhere to northward. On the 12th, leaving the _Royal Sovereign_ (100) to strengthen the escort of Craig's convoy, which had now appeared, he set out westward with 10 ships in pursuit of the enemy's 18. He reached Barbados on June 4, only 21 days after Villeneuve's arrival at Martinique. The latter had found that the Rochefort squadron--as a result of faulty transmission of Napoleon's innumerable orders--was already back in Europe, and that the Brest squadron had not come. In fact, held tight in the grip of Cornwallis, it was destined never to leave port. But a reenforcement of 2 ships had reached Villeneuve with orders to wait 35 days longer and in the meantime to harry the British colonies. Disgruntled and despondent, he had scarcely got troops aboard and started north on this mission when he learned that Nelson was hot on his trail. The troops were hastily thrown into frigates to protect the French colonies. Without other provision for their safety, and in disregard of orders, Villeneuve at once turned back for Europe, hoping the Emperor's schemes would still be set forward by his joining the ships at Ferrol. Nelson followed four days later, on June 13, steering for his old post in the Mediterranean, but at the same time despatching the fast brig _Curieux_ to England with news of the French fleet's return. This vessel by great good fortune sighted Villeneuve in mid-ocean, inferred from his northerly position that he was bound for Ferrol, and reached Portsmouth on July 8. Barham at the Admiralty got the news the next morning, angry that he had not been routed out of bed on the arrival of the captain the night before. By 9 o'clock the same morning, orders were off to Calder on the Ferrol station in time so that on the 22d of July he encountered the enemy, still plowing slowly eastward, some 300 miles west of Cape Finisterre.