If it be 'yes, that he will fire at you if you attack the French under his protection,' then, if you have force enough, make your attack on the whole body, and take them all if you can; for I should consider such an answer as a perfect Declaration of War.

If you are too weak for such an attack, you must desist; but you certainly are fully authorized to take the Ships of Spain whenever you meet them.

Should the answer be ambiguous, you must then act as your judgment may direct you, and I am sure that will be very proper.

Only recollect, that it would be much better to let the French Ships escape, than to run too great a risk of losing the Donegal, yourself, and the Ship's company.
I am, &c.
NELSON AND BRONTE.
This letter fulfils his own request to the Admiralty: "All I wish and submit to their Lordships is, that if the business is left to me, my orders may be decisive." Later in the same day that Nelson received Gore's letter, the Admiralty's orders arrived, sent, as despatches too often were, by a vessel so small and slow that it would seem they counted upon her insignificance to elude an enemy's notice.

The delay served, as has been said, to give proof of the rapidity of Nelson's action; the receipt of the orders enabled him also to show how much clearer were his conceptions of adequacy than those of ordinary men.