A lanky lad, about seventeen years old, he was evidently the oaf or hobbedehoy of the family, just as he would have been on this side of the sea; was treated as such; and was accustomed to be so treated.

In a tone of angry contempt (the poor boy had done and said nothing) the two women hounded him up the tree.

He obeyed in meek resignation, and in a couple of minutes we had more oranges than we could eat.

And such oranges: golden- green, but rather more green than gold, which cannot be (as at home) bitten or sucked; for so strong is the fragrant essential oil in the skin, that it would blister the lips and disorder the stomach; and the orange must be carefully stripped of the outer coat before you attack a pulp compared with which, for flavour, the orange of our shops is but bad sugar and water.
As I tethered my horse to a cacao-stem, and sat on a log among hothouse ferns, peeling oranges with a bowie-knife beneath the burning mid-day sun, the quaintest fancy came over me that it was all a dream, a phantasmagoria, a Christmas pantomime got up by my host for my special amusement; and that if I only winked my eyes hard enough, when I opened them again it would be all gone, and I should find myself walking with him on Ascot Heath, while the snow whirled over the heather, and the black fir-trees groaned in the north-east wind.
We soon rode on, with blessings on fair Candelaria and her stately mother, while the noise of the surf grew louder and louder in front of us.

We took (if I remember right) a sudden turn to the left, to get our horses to the shore.