Not that he had ever been in doubt as to his principles of action, for he had never had but one principle, and that was to have his cannon within pistol-shot of the French. But he was fearful of not getting there in time; for the French, in his opinion, had two objective points to strike at--the Neapolitan kingdom, which was defenceless without his fleet, and India which was also defenceless if the army in the French fleet should arrive in Egypt with ships of Tippoo Saib waiting at Suez to embark them for India, and no British ships at the mouth of the Nile to prevent their disembarking. I think the greatest ambition in all his life was to destroy Buonaparte and his army of 40,000 men, whom he knew to be in the convoy guarded by the French fleet. We had thirteen ships of the line, but none above seventy-fours--one fifty-gun ship and one brig. Had we had frigates we should have found the French long ere that; for frigates, as even landsmen know, are the eyes of a fleet, and had we possessed frigates they would have been of the highest service in capturing the transports of the convoy. But had we met them I am convinced that the absence of frigates would not have prevented the most terrible calamity which ever befel the French army. The convoy we knew to be immense, to convey such an army and its supplies for a distant expedition; and we knew it to be guarded by a fleet far superior, on paper, to ourselves. I say advisedly on paper, because the presence of our Admiral was of itself sufficient to neutralise the disparity, and because of the disadvantage at which any fleet fights which has not only to defeat an enemy, but also to save its helpless transports. As far as we could judge from various sources of information, their fleet consisted of sixteen of the line, one of them the tremendous _L'Orient_ of 120 guns, and three or four others of eighty, but three of them Venetian and not French, and therefore not likely to be so well served. Besides which they had frigates and a cloud of small armed vessels, gunboats and the like. But their superiority of force hardly entered into the Admiral's calculations. His orders were the same for whatever force, and had we fallen in with the French the scene must have been appalling; for recognising the impossibility of rapidly taking possession of so many prizes, especially as they were crowded with armed men and we were without frigates, his orders were to destroy and not to capture. He may, too, have been urged to this by the belief that the army was commanded by Buonaparte, whom he considered to be the arch-fiend, as he considered all French to be the enemies of the human race.