"The medical gentlemen are wanting to survey me, and to send me to Bristol for the re-establishment of my health," he tells Minto; but he adds, "do not mention it (it is my concern) I beg of you." Reports were then unusually persistent that the enemy was about to put to sea.

"_I_ must not be sick until after the French fleet is taken." To the last moment the destination of the French and the purposes of Bonaparte remained unknown to him, a fruitful source of guessing and worry.

"It is at best but a guess," he wrote to Ball, after a year's pondering, "and the world attaches wisdom to him that guesses right." Yet his conclusions, however reached, though subject to temporary variations, were in the main correct.

Strongly impressed though he was with the importance and exposure of Egypt, he inclined upon the whole to the belief that the French were bound to the westward, out of the Straits and into the Atlantic.

This confirmed him in taking his general summer rendezvous to the westward, where he was to windward of such a movement, as well as interposed between Toulon and any Spanish fleet attempting to go there.