g them. The Moor returned the word 'Cabeleyzes,' with gestures
signifying throat-cutting and slavery, also that these present hosts
regarded them as banditti. How far off they were it was not possible to
make out, for of course Arthur's own sensations were no guide; but he
knew that the wreck had taken place early in the afternoon, and that he
had come on shore in the dusk, which was then at about five o'clock.
There was certainly a promontory, made by the ridge of a hill, and also a
river between him and any survivors there might be.

This was all that he could gather, and he was not sure of even thus much,
but he was still too much wearied and battered for any exertion of
thought or even anxiety. Three days' tempest in a cockle-shell of a
ship, and then three hours' tossing on a plank, had left him little but
the desire of repose, and the Moors were merciful and let him alone. It
was a beautiful place--that he already knew. A Scot, and used to the sea-
coast, his eye felt at home as it ranged to the grand heights in the dim
distance, with winter caps of snow, and shaded in the most gorgeous tints
of colouring forests beneath, slopes covered with the exquisite green of
young wheat. Autumn though it was, the orange-trees, laden with fruit,
the cork-trees, ilexes, and fan-palms, gave plenty of greenery, shading
the gardens with prickly pear hedges; and though many of the fruit-trees
had lost their leaves, fig, peach, and olive, and mulberry, caper plants,
vines with foliage of every tint of red and purple, which were trained
over the trellised courts of the houses, made everything have a look of
rural plenty and peace, most unlike all that Arthur had ever heard or
imagined of the Moors, who, as he owned to himself, were certainly not
all savage pirates and slave-drivers. The whole within was surrounded by
a stone wall, with a deep horse-shoe-arched gateway, the fields and
pastures lying beyond with some more slightly-walled enclosures meant for
the protection of the flocks and herds at night.

He saw various arts going on. One man was working in iron over a little
charcoal fire, with a boy to blow up his bellows, and several more were
busied over some pottery, while the women alternated their grinding
between two mill stones, and other domestic cares, with spinning,
weaving, and beautiful embroidery. To Arthur, who looked on, with no one
to speak to except little Ulysse, it was strangely like seeing the life
of