Captain Richardson said he might be back at Lorenzo Marquez in two or three months' time, or he might not.

As a matter of fact the latter supposition proved correct, for the Seven Stars was lost on a sandbank somewhere up the coast, her crew only escaping to Mombasa after enduring great hardships.
Well, she had served my turn, for I heard afterwards that no other ship put into the Bay for a whole year from the date she left it.

So if I had not caught her at Port Elizabeth I could not have come at all, except, of course, overland.

This at best must have taken many months, and was moreover a journey that no man could enter on alone.
Now I get back to my story again.
There was no inn at Lorenzo Marquez.

Through the kindness of one of his native or half-breed wives, who could talk a little Dutch, I managed, however, to get a lodging in a tumble-down house belonging to a dissolute person who called himself Don Jose Ximenes, but who was really himself a half-breed.