“Ecod!” he muttered, ecstatically; “she’s mine—she’s mine!”
The watch was clutched in a capable fist. It was not to be dropped, you may be sure! Jamie looked up and down the road. There was no highwayman, no menacing apparition of any sort, but the fear of some ghostly ravager had been real enough. Presently the boy laughed, arose, moved into the path, stood close to the verge of the steep, which fell abruptly to the harbor water.
“I got t’ tell mamma,” he thought.
On the way to Jamie’s pocket went the watch.
“She’ll be that glad,” the boy thought, gleefully, “that she—she—she’ll jus’ fair cry!”
There was some difficulty with the pocket.
“Yes, sir,” thought Jamie, grinning; “mamma’ll jus’ cry!”
The watch slipped from Jamie’s overcautious hand, struck the rock at his feet, bounded down the steep, splashed into the harbor water, and vanished forever....
A bad time at sea: a rising wind, spray on the wing, sheets of cold rain—and the gray light of day departing. Salim Awad looked back upon the coast; he saw no waste of restless water between, no weight and frown of cloud above, but only the great black gates of Hapless Harbor, beyond which, by the favor of God, he had been privileged to leave a pearl of delight. With the wind abeam he ran on through the sudsy sea, muttering, within his heart, as that great Antar long ago had cried: “Were I to say thy face is like the full moon of heaven, wherein that full moon is the eye of the antelope? Were I to say thy shape is like the branch of the erak tree, oh, thou shamest it in the grace of thy form! In thy forehead is my guide to truth, and in the night of thy tresses I wander astray!”