uld not, or could not, return into port, according to the
fear he had expressed to Lady Hamilton, and that a battle therefore
was certain. The letter to her, from its mention of the weather as
thick, must have been written in the forenoon. His expectation that
the morrow would prove the decisive day was reinforced by one of those
prepossessions for coincidences, half jesting, half serious, which are
natural to men, but fall too far short of conviction to be called
superstitious. On the 21st of October, 1757, his uncle Maurice
Suckling had commanded one of three ships-of-the-line which had beaten
off a superior force. Nelson had several times said to Captain Hardy
and Dr. Scott, "The 21st will be our day;" and on the morning of the
battle, when the prediction was approaching fulfilment, he again
remarked that the 21st of October was the happiest day in the year for
his family; but he mentioned no reason other than that just given.

The main bodies of the contending navies did not come in sight of each
other during the 20th; the British lookout frigates, between the two,
and three or four miles from the allied line, could see their own
fleet only from the masthead. At about 2 P.M., soon after the weather
cleared, the wind shifted to west-northwest, taking the ships aback.
After filling their sails again to the new wind, as this was now fair
for their approach to the Straits' mouth, the combined fleets wore,
and headed to the southward. The British remaining on the same tack as
before,--the port,--stood to the northward until 8 P.M., when they
also wore to the southwest; but this interval of steering in nearly
opposite directions changed the relative bearings. At midnight, by the
log of Blackwood's frigates, the enemy stretched along the eastern
horizon, while the British bore southwest; the space between the two
being ten miles. The "Euryalus," three miles from the allies, saw the
loom of the lights of her own fleet. Still fearful lest the view of
his ships should shake the enemy's purpose, Nelson was careful not to
lessen this distance; the more so because the British, having the
wind, could attack when they pleased, provided the enemy by continuing
to the southward deprived themselves of the power to regain Cadiz. Two
British frigates were directed to keep them in sight during the night,
reporting their movements to two others who were stationed a little
farther from them, whence a chain of line-of-battle ships communica