“Jump, Tom-ee!” Salim clapped his hands. “Hi, hi! Dance, Tom-ee!”
In the beginning Tommy was deliberate and ponderous; but as his limbs were suppled—and when his blood ran warm again—the dance quickened; for Salim Awad slapped strangely inspiring encouragement, and with droning “la, la!” and sharp “hi, hi!” excited the boy to mad leaps—and madder still. “La, la!” and “Hi, hi!” There was a mystery in it. Tommy leaped high and fast. “La, la!” and “Hi, hi!” In response to the strange Eastern song the fisherboy’s grotesque dance went on.... Came then the appalling catastrophe: the pan of rotten, brittle salt-water ice cracked under the lad; and it fell in two parts, which, in the heave of the sea, at once drifted wide of each other. The one part was heavy, commodious; the other a mere unstable fragment of what the whole had been: and it was upon the fragment that Salim Awad and Tommy Hand were left. Instinctively they sprawled on the ice, which was now overweighted—unbalanced. Their faces were close; and as they lay rigid—while the ice wavered and the water covered it—they looked into each other’s eyes.... There was, not room for both.
“Tom-ee,” Salim Awad gasped; his breath indrawn, quivering, “I am—mus’—go!”
The boy stretched out his hand—an instinctive movement, the impulse of a brave and generous heart—to stop the sacrifice.
“Hush!” Salim Awad whispered, hurriedly, lifting a finger to command peace. “I am—for one queek time—have theenk. Hush, Tom-ee!”
Tommy Hand was silent.
And Salim Awad heard again the clatter and evening mutter of Washington Street, children’s cries and the patter of feet, drifting in from the soft spring night—heard again the rattle of dice in the outer room, and the aimless strumming of the canoun—heard again the voice of Khalil Khayyat, lifted concerning such as lose at love. And Salim Awad, staring into a place that was high and distant, beyond the gaudy, dirty ceiling of the little back room of Nageeb Fiani’s pastry-shop near the Battery, saw again the form of Haleema, Khouri’s star-eyed daughter, floating in a cloud, compassionate and glorious. “‘The sun as it sets,’” he thought, in the high words of Antar, spoken of Abla, his beloved, the daughter of Malik, when his heart was sore, “‘turns toward her and says, “Darkness obscures the land, do thou arise in my absence.” The brilliant moon calls out to her: “Come forth, for thy face is like me, when I am in all my glory.” The tamarisk-trees complain of her in the morn and in the eve, and say: “Away, thou waning beauty, thou form of the laurel!” She turns away abashed, and throws aside her veil, and the roses are scattered from her soft, fresh cheeks. Graceful is every limb; slender her waist; love-beaming are her glances; waving is her form. The lustre of day sparkles from her forehead, and by the dark shades of her curling ringlets night itself is driven away!’”.... They who lose at love? Upon what quest must the wretched ones go? And Khalil Khayyat had said that the Thing was to be found in this place.... Salim Awad’s lips trembled: because of the loneliness of this death—and because of the desert, gloomy and infinite, lying beyond.
“Tom-ee,” Salim Awad repeated, smiling now, “I am—mus’—go. Goo’-bye, Tom-ee!”
“No, no!”