While Napoleon was thus pursuing his career of victory in the interior, Nelson, having scoured the Mediterranean in quest of him, once more returned to the coast of Egypt. He arrived within sight of the towers of Alexandria on the 1st of August--ten days after the battle of the Pyramids had been fought and won--and found Brueyes still at his moorings in the bay of Aboukir. Nothing seems to be more clear than that the French admiral ought to have made the best of his way to France, or at least to Malta, the moment the army had taken possession of Alexandria. Napoleon constantly asserted that he had urged Brueyes to do so. Brueyes himself lived not to give his testimony; but Gantheaume, the vice-admiral, always persisted in stating, in direct contradiction to Buonaparte, that the fleet remained by the General's express desire. The testimonies being thus balanced, it is necessary to consult other materials of judgment; and it appears extremely difficult to doubt that the French admiral,--who, it is acknowledged on all hands, dreaded the encounter of Nelson--remained off Alexandria for the sole purpose of aiding the motions of the army, and in consequence of what he at least conceived to be the wish of its general. However this might have been, the results of his delay were terrible. The French fleet were moored in a semicircle in the bay of Aboukir, so near the shore, that, as their admiral believed, it was impossible for the enemy to come between him and the land. He expected, therefore, to be attacked on one side only, and thought himself sure that the English could not renew their favourite manœuvre of breaking the line,[25] and so at once dividing the opposed fleet, and placing the ships individually between two fires. But Nelson daringly judged that his ships might force a passage between the French and the land, and succeeding in this attempt, instantly brought on the conflict, in the same dreaded form which Brueyes had believed impossible. The details of this great sea fight belong to the history of the English hero.[26] The battle was obstinate--it lasted more than twenty hours, including the whole night. A solitary pause occurred at midnight, when the French admiral's ship _L'Orient_, a superb vessel of 120 guns, took fire, and blew up in the heart of the conflicting squadrons, with an explosion that for a moment silenced rage in awe. The admiral himself perished. Next morning two shattered ships, out of all the French fleet, with difficulty made their escape to the open sea. The rest of all that magnificent array had been utterly destroyed, or remained in the hands of the English.