Nelson hoped to assemble ten to meet them; but the news proved to be false.

He left Palermo for this trip on the 5th of October, and returned again on the 22d, having remained five days in Port Mahon.

The arrangements for the naval force, depending entirely upon himself, were soon settled; but he was disappointed in obtaining, as he had hoped to do from a personal interview with Erskine, a detachment of two thousand troops for Malta.

About that island he was, to use his own words, almost in despair.

For over a year La Valetta had been blockaded by land and sea.