Throughout a torrid August, in a profound gorge where the quivering heat abode like fiery vapors in a crater, Antonio labored on, tightening the lax Castro discipline and overhauling the muddled organization. Before the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels the vintage was over, and an unusual quantity of good wine had been pressed with exceptional care. The monk returned to Oporto in a wine-boat, and his voyage was not without excitements. Here swirling through a deep ravine, there spreading over wide shallows, the Douro kept its navigators ever on the alert. Once, at sunrise, a bark which was outstripping Antonio's came to grief. Two hogsheads of wine smashed like egg-shells against a jagged reef of slate, and the chocolate-colored water was empurpled with the spilt blood of the vine.
On reporting himself to Senhor Castro Antonio found his hours shortened, his importance heightened, and his salary raised to twenty-five milreis a month. But he did not abandon his cheap lodging over the cobbler's shop nor did he soften the austerities of his life. By the beginning of October, continued self-denial enabled him to send to the old cura five English pounds in return for the clothes and money which had started the monk on his secular career.
Antonio's were strenuous days. In the cellar and in the counting-house he gave his whole body and mind to his work. Yet he performed every day the Work of God. Soon after the disappearance of his Benedictine brethren from their convent in Oporto, he saw in a poor shop a complete monastic breviary which he bought for a few coppers. Every morning, week-day and Sunday, he heard Mass, and every day he recited the whole of the Divine Office. And over and above all this he found time for perfecting himself in spoken and written English. A swim and a long tramp on a Sunday, followed by a meal in a tavern, were his sole pleasures; and his Sunday evenings were cheerfully sacrificed to the needs of Oporto's poor and illiterate Gallegos, or Spanish porters from Galicia, whose letters to their friends at home were often written by Antonio's pen.
At the Whitsuntide holidays he would tramp off to the shrine of Bom Jesus, or Our Lord of the Mount, on a hill overlooking the primatial city of Braga. There he would eat the penny stews and halfpenny loaves, cooked for the pilgrims in the great hill-side ovens, and after a farthing draught of wine he would lie down to sleep in the open air.
After three years of this kind of life, in which each new week was almost a replica of the week before, Antonio found himself with a hundred English pounds. He had saved it by laying vintem on vintem, milreis on milreis. But he needed two hundred for the execution of his plan. The dreary prospect of three more grinding years, during which his opportunity might vanish away, suddenly dismayed him; and, falling on his knees in the ancient little church of Cedofeita, he desperately challenged heaven to make haste.
Two hours later Senhor Castro summoned the young man to his presence. He said that the quickly-waxing repute of the firm's ports in England had led to a large order for the cellars of the English king. His London partner, he added, was rising to the occasion, and had already chartered a small ship for the transport of the juice. The idea was that no one outside the firm's own staff should handle the wine throughout its voyage from the Castro warehouses to King William's cellars. Senhor Castro concluded by asking Antonio to take entire charge of the affair. Nothing was said about an increase in his salary, but he was to receive a special allowance of four pounds a week for traveling expenses from the moment of dropping anchor in the Thames until he landed again in Oporto.
Antonio thanked his employer warmly; but the secret places of the monk's heart were loud with still warmer thanks to the Lord. He swiftly reckoned that the journey would increase his little hoard by not less than thirty pounds. Besides, he would see England in the full beauty of her famous spring and summer. He would tread the pavements of the greatest city in the world. Best of all he would hear and speak nothing but the English tongue which he had worked so hard to master.
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.