The paper contained an account in English of how the bearer, the son of Christian parents, had been carried into captivity by two Mahometan merchants, a father and son, from whom he had escaped with the greatest difficulty.
"Pretty fools," said I, "must any people have been who ever stole you; but oh what fools if they wished to keep you after they had got you!" The paper was stuffed with religious and anti-slavery cant, and merely wanted a little of the teetotal nonsense to be a perfect specimen of humbug.
I strolled forward, encountering more carts and more heaps of greengages; presently I turned to the right by a street, which led some way up the hill.

The houses were tolerably large and all white.

The town, with its white houses placed by the seaside, on the skirt of a mountain, beneath a blue sky and a broiling sun, put me something in mind of a Moorish piratical town, in which I had once been.

Becoming soon tired of walking about, without any particular aim, in so great a heat, I determined to return to the inn, call for ale, and deliberate on what I had best next do.

So I returned and called for ale.