The boy accepted the offer. His father, never saying a word, sat there puffing at his pipe, watching silently all the by-play. The boy was finally handed a double-string of cash; over a thousand coins, a veritable weight of wealth such as he had never felt before.
All evening he sat playing with the double-string, counting the coins to see that he had not been defrauded. He went to sleep with the money clutched across his chest, dreaming impossible dreams in which wealth rained on him in form of silver dollars.
CHAPTER V
Ever after that incident the world seemed different. The ugly, independent child, accustomed to the rigours of the daily struggle for existence—all the acerbities of a life so close to Nature that the people seemed to lie on our great universal mother's very bosom—this child understood in a flash that somehow it was not so with everybody. There were people who were rich; people who did not have to toil and moil—people who lived in plenty. He himself had been sufficiently strong to survive without trouble; but around him were spiritless children for ever whining and starving—breaking down and dying before the obstacles of life. This little world of elementary beings, living on the tide of life sweeping in and out of the city gate, had been his only lexicon; now he understood that there were other books.
From that day also the vague background of fear in which foreigners had stood suddenly disappeared. It was replaced by an all-consuming curiosity.
He never ceased asking questions regarding them, "the devils," as he still called them from force of habit. Were there many of them in the city—how did they live—why had they wealth—were there no poor ones among them?—these were some of the things he asked.
By dint of questioning, he slowly built up a sort of picture which was still like a dream. He was told that there were a hundred or two of them in the city and that they came from over the seas in vessels driven by steam, fire-wheel vessels they were called in the vernacular. He learnt the expression without knowing what it really signified, until one day he saw a rude native print of a sea-battle being sold by a pedlar who told him that these were illustrations of the foreign ships.
His interest was such that he stood in front of the man for ever so long. He memorized the outlines so well that he was soon able to draw in the dust a fire-wheel ship with a stone, which was so amazingly accurate that a number of passers-by commended him for his talent. The huge man with the yellow beard had come on one such as these, he thought to himself; these ships travelled hundreds of thousands of li, the pedlar had said. They often consumed a year in their voyages, and they could slay enormous numbers of people with their cannon which blazed forth their wrath if any one opposed them. In this twisted manner did the story of high sea navigation reach him.
These details delighted him and filled him with amazement. The power and novelty of it all enchained him and filled his brain. Sometimes, when he had swung himself up into a tree after a bird, he would fall into a day-dream, and sitting astride of a branch, would wonder if it would not be possible for him to get closer to these men and their many inventions. He would like to see their cannon exploding in wrath, and destroying every one so that the waters were filled with struggling beings as in the pedlar's print; it would be a spectacle worthy of being looked upon. Then, presently, he would turn his thoughts to silver and to a stream of coins. The coins would come like hail in his day-dream, and he would pick them up and buy everything that his heart hungered for,—singing-birds and sweetmeats and a cap with a long red tassel, not to speak of much mutton from the Mohammedan mutton-shops.