As can be seen, start returns a tuple, i.e. a pair of values. One is stored in web, the other in nil. View the code and check this out yourself. That function is header. Only two parameters are important, the name of the server you want to connect to and the mime type.
Contents holds the contents of the file.
These contents are in HTML format and thus contains a whole load of troublesome tags. To get rid of these tags we use the module html, which contains a function called lex, which strips off all these HTML tags. This will display the first hundred lines of text. Text gives you the text version of the file. I can't help it.