As he said to himself, there was really nothing he had wanted very much to do, so that he had at least not renounced the field of valour.

At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of pleasures is the rush of action.

Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation--a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist.

He had good winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual recovery.

But this vision was dispelled some three years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this history opens: he had on that occasion remained later than usual in England and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers.
He arrived more dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between life and death.