"The Christian," he replied.
"Have you ever been of the Jewish?" said I.
He returned no answer save by a grin.
I took the paper, gave him a penny, and then walked away. 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.
