content with one another, and not less satisfied with our stew, which was indeed most savoury and palatable.  This done, we took a turn round our little domain, admiring the many strange and wonderful things that grew there (especially the figs, which, though yet green, were wondrous pleasant to eat); and I laying out my plans for the morrow, how to get this wilderness into order, tear out the worthless herbs, dig the soil, etc., Dawson’s thoughts running on the building of an outhouse for the accommodation of our wine, tools, and such like, and Moll meditating on dishes to give us for our repasts.  And at length, when these divers subjects were no more to be discussed, we turned into our dormitories, and fell asleep mighty tired, but as happy as princes.

CHAPTER XIII.

A brief summary of those twelve months we spent at Elche.

The surprising activity with which we attacked our domestic business at Elche lasted about two days and a half,—­Dawson labouring at his shed, I at the cultivation of the garden, and Moll quitting her cooking and household affairs, as occasion permitted, to lend a helping hand first to her father and then to me.  And as man, when this fever of enterprise is upon him, must for ever be seeking to add to his cares, we persuaded Don Sanchez to let us have two she-goats to stall in the shed and consume our waste herbage, that we might have milk and get butter, which they do in these parts by shaking the cream in a skin bag (a method that seems simple enough till you have been shaking the bag for twenty minutes in vain on a sultry morning) without cost.  But the novelty of the thing wearing off, our eagerness rapidly subsided, and so about the third day (as I say), the heat being prodigious, we toiled with no spirit at all.

Dawson was the first to speak his mind.  Says he, coming to me whilst I was still sweating over my shovel: 

“I’ve done it, but hang me if I do more.  There’s a good piece of work worth thirty shillings of any man’s money, but who’ll give me a thank ye for it when we leave here next year?”

And then he can find nothing better to do than fall a-commenting on my labours, saying there was but precious little to show for my efforts, that had he been in my place he would have ordered matters otherwise, and begun digging t’other end, wagering that I should give up my job before it was quarter done, etc., all which was mighty discouraging and the more unpleasant because I felt there was a good deal of truth in what he said.