given--"appeared, in particular, to have been strengthened, and all
the buoys of the Northern, and of the King's Channels had been
removed." Nelson, however, was, or feigned to be, less impressed. "I
have just been reconnoitring the Danish line of defence," he wrote to
Lady Hamilton. "It looks formidable to those who are children at war,
but to my judgment, with ten sail-of-the-line I think I can annihilate
them; at all events, I hope to be allowed to try." This is again the
same spirit of the seaman "determined to attack" at Aboukir; the same
resolution as before Bastia, where he kept shut in his own breast the
knowledge of the odds, feeling that to do nothing was as bad as
failure--and worse. A like eagerness does not seem to have prevailed
on board the flagship. Parker had allowed himself to be stiffened to
the fighting-point by the junior he had before disregarded, but that
he looked to the issue with more than doubt may be inferred from the
words of his private secretary, the Rev. Mr. Scott, who afterwards
held the same relation to Nelson. "I fear," he wrote on the day of
the council, "there is a great deal of Quixotism in this business;
there is no getting any positive information of their strength."

Nelson's general plan of attack is set forth in main outlines in the
letter already given, but it is desirable to give a somewhat more
detailed description. It will be seen, by the annexed chart, that
there are before Copenhagen two channels by which the city can be
passed. Between the two lies a shoal, called the Middle Ground. The
inner, known as the King's Channel, lay under the guns of the defences
which had been hurriedly improvised for the present emergency. These
consisted of a line of hulks, mostly mastless, ranged along the inner
side of the King's Channel, close to the flats which bordered it,
flanked at the northern end by the permanent work, called the
Trekroner[29] Battery. Westward of the latter lay, across the mouth of