The Life Of Nelson, Volume I.

In five days the squadron had filled with water and again sailed. Satisfied that the enemy were somewhere in the Levant, Nelson now intended a deliberate search for them -- or rather for their fleet, the destruction of which was the crucial object of all his movements. "It has been said," he wrote to Hamilton, "that to leeward of the two frigates I saw off Cape Passaro was a line-of-battle ship, with the riches of Malta on board, but it was the destruction of the enemy, not riches for myself, that I was seeking. These would have fallen to me if I had had frigates, but except the ship-of-the-line, I regard not all the riches in this world." A plaintive remonstrance against his second departure was penned by the Neapolitan prime minister, which depicts so plainly the commonplace view of a military situation, -- the apprehensions of one to whom immediate security is the great object in war, -- that it justifies quotation, and comparison with the clear intuitions, and firmly grasped principle, which placed Nelson always, in desire, alongside the enemy's fleet, and twice carried him, at every risk, to the end of the Mediterranean to seek it. "We are now in danger of a war, directly on Admiral Nelson's account; you see fairly our position; will Admiral Nelson run to the Levant again without knowing for certain the position of the French, and leave the Two Sicilies exposed in these moments? Bonaparte has absconded himself, but in any port he has taken securities not to be forced. God knows where he is, and whether we shall not see him again in a few days, if we do not hear of what a course he has taken. I present all this to your consideration." To this letter, which oddly enough was written on the very day the Battle of the Nile was fought, Nelson might well have replied then, as he did in terms a year afterwards, "The best defense for His Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside the French fleet."

The fleet left Syracuse on the 25th of July, just one week before the discovery of the enemy in Abukir Bay