His face is perfectly calm; his eyes, lustrous as stars, show no traces of terror; they are fixed on the men with a kindly glance, but they darken as he turns to the boys.
"You see, my boys," said he, with a calm and at the same time threatening expression, "I have won my wager! Here is the proof that I was over there. The knife that Ibrahim lost there yesterday, I bring back to him. Here it is!"
He takes the knife out of his jacket, thoroughly drenched with water, and throws it down before the boys. "I have won my wager! You men are witnesses of my triumph! Each boy is bound to pay me tribute from to-day. Each one must furnish me, twice a week, with the best peaches and dates from his garden, and when we go out to the chase they must obey me, and acknowledge me to be their captain."
What triumph shone in his eyes, what an expression of energy in the bearing of a boy scarcely ten years old!
"That was it!" exclaimed Toussoun Aga, in a reproachful tone. "For this reason my brother's son risked his life, and caused his mother and all of us so much anxiety.—Allah forgive you! You are a wild, defiant boy."
"No, uncle," cried the boy; "no, I am not wild and defiant. They ridiculed me, and said I was not as good as they, could do nothing, didn't even know how to steer a boat. And then we laid a wager, and I won my wager; and they shall pay the tribute, and acknowledge me to be their captain. I call all you men to witness that I am the captain of the boys of Cavalla."
The men looked at each other, amused and astonished at the same time. He speaks like a child, and yet haughtily, like a monarch. His words are childish, and yet so full of energy. And many of them thought they could read in the book of the future that a great destiny awaited the poor boy Mohammed Ali. "He is poor, to be sure, and will have much hard fighting to do with the storms of life. May the same success he has met with against the storms of the sea to- day also attend him hereafter against the storms of life!"
Toussoun Aga stretches out his hand to take that of his nephew Mohammed, to lead him to the rock above, to his mother, but the boy quickly rejects the proffered assistance.
"I can ascend the rock to my mother alone; I am not weak and terrified, uncle. Go on, I will follow."
And, as he says this, he crosses his hands behind his back. The rest now cry out: