The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom.[…]Roaring, leaping, pouncing, the tempest raged about the wanderers, drowning and blotting out their forms with sandy spume.

‘baniak baniak you ole fucker! | you’re tighter than hogan’s goat!’ | baniak only smiles | a perfect smile [footnote] baniak: Ukrainian for cooking pot.

[H]e was sometimes seen disputing with the cobbler, his opposite neighbour, about the charge of two-pence; and refusing to pay Crispin's demand, unless he put three or four more sparables in the heels of the shoes which he had mended twice before!

A short, rather studious young woman on noticing him moved from behind an island counter.