“Oh, dear me!” groaned the poet. “You mus’ see. It is a child!”
A gust was the only answer.
“Oh, mygod!” cried Salim Awad, poet, who had wandered astray in the tresses of night. “Oh, dear me! Oh, gee!”
Without more persuasion, he prepared himself for this high mission in salvation of the heart of a child; and being no longer deterred, he put out upon it—having no fear of the seething water, but a great pity for the incomprehension of such as knew it best. It was a wild night; the wind was a vicious wind, the rain a blinding mist, the night thick and unkind, the sea such in turmoil as no punt could live through save by grace. Beyond Chain Tickle, Salim Awad entered the thick of that gale, but was not perturbed; for he remembered, rather than recognized the menace of the water, the words of that great lover, Antar, warrior and lover, who, from the sands of isolation, sang to Abla, his beloved: “The sun as it sets turns toward her and says, Darkness obscures the land, do thou arise in my absence. And the brilliant moon calls out to her, Come forth, for thy face is like me when I am at the full and in all my glory.”
The hand upon the steering-oar of this punt, cast into an ill-tempered, cold, dreary, evil-intentioned northern sea, was without agitation, the hand upon the halyard was perceiving and sure, the eye of intelligence was detached from romance; but still the heart remembered: “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.”
The lights of Hapless Harbor dwindled; one by one they went out, a last message of wariness; but still there shone, bright and promising continuance, a lamp of Greedy Head, whereon the cottage of Skipper Jim Tuft, the father of Jamie, was builded.
“I will have come safe,” thought Salim, “if thee light of Jamie have burn on.”
It continued to burn.
“It is because of thee broke heart,” thought Salim.
The light was not put out: Salim Awad—this child of sand and heat and poetry—made harbor in the rocky north; and he was delighted with the achievement. But how? I do not know. ’Twas a marvellous thing—thus to flaunt through three miles of wind-swept, grasping sea. A gale of wind was blowing—a gale to compel schooners to reef—ay, and to double reef, and to hunt shelter like a rabbit pursued: this I have been told, and for myself know, because I was abroad, Cape Norman way. No Newfoundlander could have crossed the run from Chain Tickle to Hapless Harbor at that time; the thing is beyond dispute; ’twas a feat impossible—with wind and lop and rain and pelting spray to fight. But this poet, desert born and bred, won through, despite the antagonism of all alien enemies, cold and wet and vigorous wind: this poet won through, led by Antar, who said: “Thy bosom is created as an enchantment. Oh, may God protect it ever in that perfection,” and by his great wish to ease the pain of a child, and by his knowledge of wind and sea, gained by three years of seeking for the relief of the sorrows of love.