"Please, Mr Blore, tell the old gentleman that I am much obliged to him," answered Ben; "but as I have not fallen quite into his style of living, I beg he will excuse me; and, to say the truth, I had rather serve on board a man-of-war till I can get a pension, and go and settle down with my Susan in Old England, than turn into an Arab sheikh with a dozen wives and a thousand blackamoor followers."
Having recruited our strength, we some days after left our kind French friends and set off for Algiers, where we arrived safely; and soon afterwards, accompanied by Selim, we embarked for England.
I need not say that we were welcomed there as if from the dead, by our friends; and I trust that we were all thankful for the merciful way in which we had been preserved from the numberless dangers we had gone through. Andrew Spurling was delighted to see us. "I told you, Mr Blore, that you would find Arabic useful, though I little thought at the time how much service its acquirement would render you," he exclaimed as he shook me by the hand. "However, it proves, as I once observed to you, that the more knowledge we can pick up the better, as we can never tell how valuable it may become to us."