As he walked out of the chief's office and gazed across the familiar river to the blinding whiteness of Oporto, Antonio suddenly realized that his good fortune had not befallen him a day too soon. During his daily, weekly, monthly plodding at a routine of dogged overwork he had not perceived that he was drawing away his reserves of health and courage. But, all in a moment, the unutterable staleness of his duties and surroundings sickened him. He shrank back from the torrid glare into a patch of shade and gasped greedily for air, like a newly-caught fish. Until he recovered self-control it seemed impossible to wait another moment for the waters and fresh breezes of the Atlantic, and for the green meadows and cool glades of England. Ten mornings later the _Queen of the Medway_, with Antonio and his precious pipes of port on board, dropped down the Douro on a strong ebb-tide. A gentle wind blew favorably from the south, and before sunset the schooner had lost sight of Monte Luzia, the holy hill which watches over the towers and roofs of Vianna do Castello. As the last lights faded Antonio almost made out through the captain's glasses the mouth of the little river which divides Portugal from Spain. At daybreak the wind freshened and the monk, climbing the ladder with difficulty, peeped out at the arid peaks of Galicia. His next three days were less happy, for the Bay of Biscay was not in one of its softer moods. Turning round Ushant, the _Queen of the Medway_ swam as gently as a swan into summer seas. The wind, after veering round to the west, had weakened into the softest of zephyrs, so that the log during the voyage up Channel never showed more than fifty knots a day. But Antonio inwardly gave thanks. At the first sight of Brittany his sea-sickness ceased. He began to eat like a hunter and to sleep like a log. In his portmanteau were English books and a grammar; but, outside the Divine Office, he did not read a word. For nine or ten hours a day he lay full-length on the deck, basking in the temperate sunshine while the immense tranquillity of sky and sea healed his nerves, and the soft air bought back color to his cheeks and light to his eyes. The snow-white precipices of the English coast, and especially Shakespeare's Cliff, were so unlike anything he had ever seen before that they would have stirred Antonio even if there had been nothing within him of the poet and the student. But as they gave place to the flat beaches of Whitstable and the earth-banks of Sheppey he forgot the white walls in his eagerness to see the wonders they guarded. With the rosy breaking of the sixteenth day of the voyage he was already on the deck scanning the banks of the Thames. The chill landscape looked un-English and reminded him of Dutch pictures.