Prevented by an easterly wind from going on to Flushing, as he had intended, Nelson returned to Margate on the 6th of August, issued a proclamation to the Fencibles, assuring them that the French undoubtedly intended an invasion, that their services were absolutely required at once on board the defence-ships, and that they could rely upon being returned to their homes as soon as the danger was over.

Out of twenty-six hundred, only three hundred and eighty-five volunteered to this urgent call.

"They are no more willing to give up their occupations than their superiors," wrote Nelson, with characteristically shrewd insight into a frame of mind wholly alien to his own self-sacrificing love of Country and of glory.
Hurrying from station to station, on the shores, and in the channels of the Thames, he was on the 12th of August back at Margate, evidently disappointed in the prospects for coast-defence, and more and more inclining to the deep-sea cruising, and to action on the enemy's coast, recommended by the Admiralty, and consonant to his own temper, always disdainful of mere defensive measures.

"Our active force is perfect," he wrote to St.Vincent, "and possesses so much zeal that I only want to catch that Buonaparte on the water." He has satisfied himself that the French preparations were greatly exaggerated; Boulogne in fact could not harbor the needed vessels, unless enlarged, as afterwards by Napoleon.

"Where is our invasion to come from?
The _time_ is gone." Nevertheless, he favors an attack of some sort, suggests an expedition against Flushing, with five thousand troops, and proposes a consultation.