On the following day he wrote again. “We are in hourly expectation of a proclamation ordering his Majesty’s subjects to quit the kingdom. Our stay must be short.” It was, indeed, a hazardous position. Junot at the head of his army was pushing rapidly through Spain. The Portuguese Cabinet saw no safety save in acts of hostility towards the English. The crime of Helvoetsluis stood on record as a warning of what might be expected when the French arrived, and the British residents on the Tagus poured out of the country day by day. Mr. Chamberlain’s duty was to maintain the Postal Service until the very last moment; no order for arresting the English had yet appeared, but it was expected hourly, and the agent, who could not hope to be exempted from its scope, took the precaution of chartering a small armed schooner which was to lie off the coast in readiness for sailing night or day. The crisis came on November 11th. All Englishmen, save the Ambassador and his staff, were to be arrested. Mr. Chamberlain concealed about his person a number of despatches for the Foreign Secretary, and, escaping from his lodging, made his way to the coast. To his dismay his schooner was nowhere to be found. A violent storm had blown her out to sea. He hired a boat, and made efforts to reach some of the British vessels in the offing, but the sea ran so high that he was obliged to put back three times, and at last the sailors declined to go out again. Mr. Chamberlain therefore started off on foot, and after a perilous journey reached Cascaes, where, by good luck, he found the “Walsingham,” a Falmouth Packet, which, on attempting to enter the Tagus as usual on the previous day, had been fired on from the batteries, and was now standing on and off the coast in the hope of ascertaining the precise situation of affairs. Mr. Chamberlain’s arrival settled any doubt as to the hostility of the Portuguese, and the “Walsingham” at once set sail for Falmouth. The only hope of the Post-Office now lay in schemes of smuggling, conducted from Heligoland. Suggestions were pouring in upon them. Plans more or less impracticable emanated from every crazy enthusiast in London, and the general public demonstrated no less clearly than in our own times its conviction that it was qualified to instruct the experts. There were anxious consultations at the Foreign Office between Mr. Canning, Mr. Freeling, and Mr. Thornton, who was fortunately at hand to give the benefit of his unrivalled local knowledge and of that sagacity which had extorted the admiration of Bourrienne. The immediate difficulty was to find a means of communicating to the Senate of Hamburg, then, as always, friendly to the English, the fact that mails were lying at Heligoland, and to concert with them some scheme for introducing those mails into the city.