I hope to reserve them for a better occasion." That afternoon they anchored again, about five miles below Copenhagen.
Parker and Nelson, accompanied by several senior officers, went at once in a schooner to view the defences of the town.

"We soon perceived," wrote Stewart, "that our delay had been of important advantage to the enemy, who had lined the northern edge of the shoals near the Crown batteries, and the front of the harbour and arsenal, with a formidable flotilla.

The Trekroner (Three Crowns) Battery"-- a strong work established on piles, whose position will be given--"appeared, in particular, to have been strengthened, and all the buoys of the Northern, and of the King's Channels had been removed." Nelson, however, was, or feigned to be, less impressed.

"I have just been reconnoitring the Danish line of defence," he wrote to Lady Hamilton.

"It looks formidable to those who are children at war, but to my judgment, with ten sail-of-the-line I think I can annihilate them; at all events, I hope to be allowed to try." This is again the same spirit of the seaman "determined to attack" at Aboukir; the same resolution as before Bastia, where he kept shut in his own breast the knowledge of the odds, feeling that to do nothing was as bad as failure--and worse.