BORROW remained in England for a month (3rd October/4th November), during which time he conferred with the Committee and Officials at Earl Street as to the future programme in Spain. On 4th November, having sent to his mother £130 of the £150 he had drawn as salary, and promising to write to Mr Brandram from Cadiz, he sailed from London in the steamer _Manchester_, bound for Lisbon and Cadiz.
In a letter to his mother, he describes his fellow passengers as invalids fleeing from the English winter. “Some of them are three parts gone with consumption,” he writes, “some are ruptured, some have broken backs; I am the only sound person in the ship, which is crowded to suffocation. I am in a little hole of a berth where I can scarcely breathe, and every now and then wet through.”
The horrors of the voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon he has described with terrifying vividness; { 185a} how the engines broke down and the vessel was being driven on to Cape Finisterre; how all hope had been abandoned, and the Captain had told the passengers of their impending fate; how the wind suddenly “_veered right about_, and pushed us from the horrible coast faster than it had previously driven us towards it.” { 185b}
During the whole of that terrible night Borrow had remained on deck, all the other passengers having been battened down below. He was almost drowned in the seas that broke over the vessel, and, on one occasion, was struck down by a water cask that had broken away from its lashings. Even after he had escaped Cape Finisterre, the ordeal was not over; for the ship was in a sinking condition, and fire broke out on board. Eventually the engines were repaired, the fire extinguished, and Lisbon was reached on the 13th, where Borrow landed with his water-soaked luggage, and found on examination that the greater part of his clothes had been ruined. In spite of this experience, he determined to continue his voyage to Cadiz in the _Manchester_, probably for reasons of economy, indifferent to the fact that she was utterly unseaworthy, and that most of the other passengers had abandoned her. During his enforced stay in Lisbon, whilst the ship was being patched up, Borrow saw Mr Wilby and made enquiry into the state of the Society’s affairs in Portugal. Many changes had taken place and the country was in a distracted state.