Now this last voyage of mine with Captain Freeman was a mighty prosperous and agreeable one, so that from the day we left Swally to that wherein we were able with our perspective glasses to discern the white cliffs of our own island, we met with little rough weather, and no calamitous accidents. And on this quietness and lack of danger our captain did much felicitate me, saying that had the pirates and the Barbary rovers, whom he feared, but known of the wealth that I brought home with me, it had gone hard with them if they had not come against us in so great force as to overpower us, when we must all have ended our days as slaves in Algier or Sallee. But this danger, like the others on our path, we passed without encountering ’em, and so arrived safely at Graves-End, and there landed, where I had embarked more than twenty years before, on the third day of October 1684. Now in London I must needs repair to the Company’s House in Leadenhall Street, and there give some account of myself, delivering, moreover, the letters wherewith I had been charged by Mr President at Surat, and ’twas also only fitting that I should pay my respects to my lord Duke of London, the son of my own learned and virtuous patron; and when these things was done, and likewise much business of my own, with respect to that merchandise I had with me, Captain Freeman would have me visit him at his inn where he lodged, and make the acquaintance of his wife and children. But I can declare to you that I hurried through these duties with the greatest haste in the world, desiring nothing so much as to have ’em over, and so feel myself free to ride into Northamptonshire and seek my own home. For during all our voyage, that longing that had seized me at Surat did but grow stronger and stronger, so that Captain Freeman told me I was like a sailor-lad coming home to his sweetheart, with so great eagerness did I watch for favouring winds and desire the first sight of the shore. And now that I was once more in town, and saw on every side the spots where I had wandered as a lad, with my head full of glory and of Dorothy, the spirit of those past days seemed to return upon me, and I could scarce wait to complete my business before I bid Loll Duss have the horses saddled for a start betimes one morning.