ring his grim majesty out of
countenance, and nightly slumbering on the cold earth, or in the
tenantless mansion, for I felt as if she would have been the chosen
companion of my waking dreams in _rosier_ walks, as I never recalled
the fair vision to my aid, even in the worst of times, that it did not
act upon my drooping spirits like a glass of brandy.

It pleased the great disposer of naval events to remove us to another
and a better ship, and to send us off for Figuera, next day, with a
foul wind.

Sailing at the rate of one mile in two hours, we reached Figuera's Bay
at the end of eight days, and were welcomed by about a hundred hideous
looking Portuguese women, whose joy was so excessive that they waded
up to their arm-pits through a heavy surf, and insisted on carrying us
on shore on their backs! I never clearly ascertained whether they had
been actuated by the purity of love or gold.

Our men were lodged for the night in a large barn, and the officers
billetted in town. Mine chanced to be on the house of a mad-woman,
whose extraordinary appearance I never shall forget. Her petticoats
scarcely reached to the knee, and all above the lower part of the
bosom was bare; and though she looked not more than middle aged, her
skin seemed as if it had been regularly prepared to receive the
impression of her last will and testament; her head was defended by a
chevaux-de-frise of black wiry hair, which pointed fiercely in every
direction, while her eyes looked like two burnt holes in a blanket. I
had no sooner opened the door than she stuck her arms a-kimbo, and,
opening a mouth, which stretched from ear to ear, she began
vociferating "_bravo, bravissimo_!"

Being a stranger alike to the appearance and the manners of the
natives, I thought it possible that the former might have been nothing
out of the common run, and concluding that she was overjoyed at seeing
her country reinforced, at that perilous moment, by a fellow upwards
of six feet high, and thinking it necessary to sympathize in some
degree in her patriotic feelings, I began to "_bravo_" too; but as her
second shout ascended ten degrees, and kept increasing in that ratio,
until it amounted to absolute frenzy, I faced to the right-about, and,
before our _tete-a-tete_ had lasted the brief space of three-quarters
of a minute, I disappeared with all possible haste, her terrific yells
vibrating in my astonished ears long after I had turned the corner of
the street; no