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Rh seemed inevitable. They mounted ten guns, their companion packet seven; but the cutter was more than a match for both. All were in a bustle of preparation; Mrs. Southey, pale and trembling, was conveyed to the cockpit, and Southey, musket in hand, took his station on the quarter-deck. The cutter swept between the two vessels with contemptuous calmness. She was so near, that the smoke from her matches was clearly discernible. They hailed her, and were replied to in broken English, and the object of dread passed on. She was veritably English, though manned chiefly by Guernsey men. Southey felt an "honest joy" at this satisfactory conclusion. "I laid the musket in the chest," says he, "with considerably more pleasure than I took it out."

He remained at Lisbon a month or two, renewing old associations, and in July took up his abode at Cintra. Here he busied himself in collecting materials for his "History of Portugal," the work that was to hand down his name to posterity, almost the first and the last day dream of his life. He devoted himself likewise to the assiduous study of Portuguese literature, nothing daunted by its comparatively unimportant character. "It is not worth much," says he, "but it is not from the rose and the violet only that the bee sucks honey."

He missed at first the companionship and conversation of his friends. "Here I lack society," he wrote, "and were it not for a self-sufficiency (like the bear who sucks his paws when the snow shuts him up in his den) should be in a state of famine;" but this want kept him with the greater steadiness at his studies. He formed also an attachment for the neighbourhood of Cintra, and contemplated a return to England with evident reluctance. His health materially improved, and the glowing scenery of his temporary home grew familiar to his imagination.