When he next awoke, Ulysse was very happily at play with some little brown children, as if the sports of childhood defied the curse of Babel, and a sailor from the tartane was being greeted by the master of the house.  Arthur hoped that some communication would now be possible, but, unfortunately, the man knew very little of the lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, and Arthur knew still less.  However, he made out that he was the only one of the shipwrecked crew who had managed to reach the land, and that this was a village of Moors—­settled agricultural Moors, not Arabs, good Moslems—­who would do him no harm.  This, and he pointed to a fine-looking elderly man, was the sheyk of the village, Abou Ben Zegri, and if the young Giaours would conform to the true faith all would be salem with them.  Arthur shook his head, and tried by word and sign to indicate his anxiety for the rest of his companions.  The sailor threw up his hands, and pointed towards the sea, to show that he believed them to be all lost; but Arthur insisted that five—­marking them off on his fingers—­were on gebal, a rock, and emphatically indicated his desire of reaching 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.