The fleet then bore up for the Straits, and on the 14th six ships, the "Agamemnon" among them, parted company for Cadiz, there to fill up with water, in order to avoid the delays which would arise if the scanty resources of Gibraltar had to supply all the vessels.

On the 23d this division left Cadiz, reaching Gibraltar the same evening; and on the 27th Hood, having now with him fifteen of the line, sailed for Toulon.
Nelson's mind was already busy with the prospects of the campaign, and the various naval factors that went to make up the military situation.
"Time must discover what we are going after," he writes to his brother; while to Locker he propounds the problem which always has perplexed the British mind, and still does,--how to make the French fight, if they are unwilling.

So long as that question remains unsolved, the British government has to bear the uncertainties, exposure, and expense of a difficult and protracted defensive.

"We have done nothing," he says, "and the same prospect appears before us: the French cannot come out, and we have no means of getting at them in Toulon." In "cannot come out," he alludes to the presence of a Spanish fleet of twenty-four ships-of-the-line.

This, in conjunction with Hood's force, would far exceed the French in Toulon, which the highest estimate then placed at twenty-one of the line.