In the mean time, the officers and crew of the fleet, by foul winds, with heavy falls of sleet, snow, and rain, added to a chilling cold, which they particularly experienced from the 21st to the 24th, suffered considerable fatigue. This, with the delay, had a tendency to damp the ardour of the enterprise; and Lord Nelson, aware of all the consequences, would gladly have discarded much of that diplomatic etiquette which finally proved, as he had from the first supposed it would do, quite unimpressive with the Danes. Still less did he regard the discouraging suggestions of ignorant and designing pilots, whose exaggerated accounts of the difficulties to be surmounted, when the commander in chief had resolved on forcing the passage of the Sound, represented the enterprise as more practicable, and less hazardous, by the circuitous passage of the Great Belt. Though Lord Nelson's mind could not be thus induced to fluctuate, and was decidedly for the immediate passage of the Sound, when the Great Belt appeared to be preferred--"Let us, then, go by the Great Belt!" said the hero. Impatient for action, he was desirous of proceeding by any way which might soonest lead to the object. On the 26th, at day-break, the fleet got under weigh, and stood to the westward; for the purpose, as was generally imagined, of passing the Great Belt; and Captain Murray, of the Edgar, who had, the preceding summer, surveyed that entrance to the Baltic with a degree of precision hitherto unknown, tendered his services for the purpose. The facility with which this passage might be effected, by the aid of so active and intelligent an officer, where the Danes had only a single guard-ship, left little room to doubt that it would be adopted. This, however, was not done. Several vessels from the Baltic, on this and the following day, passed the Sound, under Prussian colours; and they were permitted to proceed, notwithstanding it was then sufficiently ascertained that Prussia had also acceded to this confederacy against Great Britain. On the 27th, Sir Hyde Parker, acting under his instructions, dispatched a flag of truce, with the following note, to the Governor of Cronenberg Castle, "From the hostile transactions of the Court of Denmark, and sending away his Britannic Majesty's Charge d'Affaires, the commander in chief of his majesty's fleet is anxious to know what the determination of the Danish Court is--and whether the commanding officer of Cronenberg Castle has received orders to fire on the British fleet as they pass into the Sound?--as he must deem the firing; of the first gun a declaration of war on the part of Denmark. "Hyde Parker." To these enquiries, this answer was returned by the Danish Governor.