As Napoleon was entering between the huge rocky barriers of La Valette, Caffarelli said to him: "It is well there was some one within to open the door for us; had there been no garrison at all, the business might have been less easy." From Malta--where he left a detachment of troops to guard an acquisition which he expected to find eminently useful in his future communications with France--Buonaparte steered eastwards; but, after some days, ran upon the coast of Candia to take in water and fresh provisions, and, by thus casually diverging from his course, escaped imminent danger.

For Nelson, soon returning to Toulon, missed the shipping which had so lately crowded the harbour, and ascertaining that they had not sailed towards the Atlantic, divined on the instant that their mark must be Egypt.

His fleet was inferior in numbers, but he pursued without hesitation; and taking the straight line, arrived off the Nile before any of the French ships had appeared there.

Buonaparte, on hearing off Candia that the English fleet was already in the Levant, directed Admiral Brueyes to steer not for Alexandria, but for a more northerly point of the coast of Africa.

Nelson, on the other hand, not finding the enemy where he had expected, turned back and traversed the sea in quest of him, to Rhodes--and thence to Syracuse.