"Mohammed, compose yourself and be strong!" said the tschorbadji, clasping his arms about him. "Friend of my son, take pity on me, and remember that Osman dies if you die."
He shakes his head, but cannot speak. He looks at the sea, the terrible sea! His eyes stare in horror at the place where Masa sank, then close, and he falls to the ground insensible. The servants now raise him in their arms, and carry him to the governor's house.
His countenance deathly pale, Osman stands at the gate awaiting them. He sees the sad procession approaching. He knows they are bringing his friend, and, hastening forward to meet them, he receives the motionless body, hot, glowing tears pouring from his eyes.
Awakened by the dew of his friend's falling tears, Mohammed opens his eyes and looks up. His lips part, and murmur softly, "Dead, Masa is dead!"—nothing more!
The whole history of his anguish lies in the words, "Dead, Masa is dead!"
CHAPTER II
ALL THINGS PASS AWAY.
Ten years had passed since the painful event that had consigned the daughter of the sheik, the Flower of Praousta, to so early a grave, and caused him who had loved her a long and severe illness.
Ten years! To the happy, when he looks back at them, they are but a few days of sunshine, the contemplation of which delights him, and the memory of which softens his heart. To the unhappy they are as a cold, desolate eternity of torment, and he looks back with reluctance at them, and the misery he has endured, measuring the days of anguish that are still to come.
Ten years! In Cavalla they had changed nothing. They had only left their handwriting on the faces of those who had been living ten years before, and had witnessed those painful events. The faces of men had changed, but the sea then, as at that time, shone in the beauty and freshness of eternal youth, and still surged in majesty along its rock-bound coast, and over the deep, the unknown grave of the beautiful Masa, the forgotten one.