only for my ransom, they began to vie with each other in
obsequiousness and reverence.

"Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy liberty, I was
for some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place.
The turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and
afforded a view of many windings of the stream. In the day I
wandered from one place to another, as the course of the sun varied
the splendour of the prospect, and saw many things which I had
never seen before. The crocodiles and river-horses are common in
this unpeopled region; and I often looked upon them with terror,
though I knew they could not hurt me. For some time I expected to
see mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has told me, the European
travellers have stationed in the Nile; but no such beings ever
appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after them, laughed at my
credulity.

"At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for
celestial observations, where he endeavoured to teach me the names
and courses of the stars. I had no great inclination to this
study; but an appearance of attention was necessary to please my
instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and in a little while
I found some employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of
time, which was to be passed always amidst the same objects. I was
weary of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned
away weary in the evening: I therefore was at last willing to
observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not always
compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekayah when
others imagined me contemplating the sky. Soon after, the Arab
went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk