Every Man for Himself Part 12

Jamie waited in intense anxiety, while Salim paused to enjoy the mystery.

"Have I then become to spoil thee boy?" Salim demanded. "No? Ver' good.

How then can thee price of thee watch have be two twenty?"

Jamie could not answer.

"Ver' good!" cried the delighted Salim. "Ver', ver' good! I am have tell you. Hist!" he whispered.

Jamie c.o.c.ked his ear.

"Hist!" said Salim Awad again.

They were alone-upon a bleak hill-side, in a wet, driving wind.

"I have be to New York," Salim whispered, in a vast excitement of secrecy and delight. "I am theenk: 'Thee boy want thee watch. How thee boy have thee watch? Thee good boy _mus'_ have thee watch. Oh, myG.o.d!

how?' I theenk. I theenk, an' I theenk, an' I theenk. Thee boy mus' pay fair price for thee watch. Ha! Thee Salim ver' clever. He feex thee price of thee watch, you bet! Eh! Ver' good. How?"

Jamie was tapped on the breast; he looked into the Syrian's wide, delighted, mocking brown eyes-but could not fathom the mystery.

"How?" cried Salim. "Eh? How can the price come down?"

Jamie shook his head.

"_I have smuggle thee watch!_" Salim whispered.

"Whew!" Jamie whistled. "That's sinful!"

"Thee watch it have be to you," answered Salim, gently. "Thee sin," he added, bowing courteously, a hand on his heart, "it have be all my own!"

For a long time after Salim Awad's departure, Jamie Tuft sat in the lee of Bishop's Rock-until indeed, the dark alien's punt had fluttered out to sea on the perilous run to Chain Tickle. It began to rain in great drops; the sullen mood of the day was about to break in some wrathful outrage upon the coast. Gusts of wind swung in and down upon the boy-a cold rain, a bitter, rising wind. But Jamie still sat oblivious in the lee of the rock. It was hard for him, unused to gifts, through all his days unknown to favorable changes of fortune, to overcome his astonishment-to enter into the reality of this possession. The like had never happened before: never before had joy followed all in a flash upon months of mournful expectation. He sat as still as the pa.s.sionless rock lifted behind him. It was a tragedy of delight. Two dirty, cracked, toil-distorted hands-two young hands, aged and stained and malformed by labor beyond their measure of strength and years to do-two hands and the s.h.i.+ning treasure within them: to these his world was, for the time, reduced-the rest, the harsh world of rock and rising sea and harsher toil and deprivation, was turned to mist; it was like a circle of fog.

Jamie looked up.

"By d.a.m.n!" he thought, savagely, "'tis-'tis-_mine_!"

The character of the exclamation is to be condoned; this sense of owners.h.i.+p had come like a vision.

"Why, I _got_ she!" thought Jamie.

Herein was expressed more of agonized dread, more of the terror that accompanies great possessions, than of delight.

"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 G.o.d, 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!_"

And presently, having won Chain Tickle, he pulled slowly to Aunt Amelia's wharf, where he moored the punt, dreaming all the while of Haleema, Khouri's daughter, star of the world. Before he climbed the hill to the little cottage, ghostly in the dusk and rain, he turned again to Hapless Harbor. The fog had been blown away; beyond the heads of the Tickle-far across the angry run-the lights of Hapless were s.h.i.+ning cheerily.

"Ver' good sailor-me!" thought Salim. "Ver' good hand, you bet!"

A gust of wind swept down the Tickle and went bounding up the hill.

"He not get me!" muttered Salim between bared teeth.

A second gust showered the peddler with water s.n.a.t.c.hed from the harbor.

"Ver' glad to be in," thought Salim, with a shudder, turning now from the black, tumultuous prospect. "Ver' mos' awful glad to be in!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DARK, SMILING SALIM, WITH HIS MAGIC PACK, WAS WELCOME]

It was cosey in Aunt Amelia's hospitable kitchen. The dark, smiling Salim, with his magic pack, was welcome. The wares displayed-no more for purchase than for the delight of inspection-Salim stowed them away, sat himself by the fire, gave himself to ease and comfort, to the delight of a cigarette, and to the pleasure of Aunt Amelia's genial chattering. The wind beat upon the cottage-went on, wailing, sighing, calling-and in the lulls the breaking of the sea interrupted the silence. An hour-two hours, it may be-and there was the tramp of late-comers stumbling up the hill. A loud knocking, then entered for entertainment three gigantic dripping figures-men of Catch-as-Catch-Can, bound down to Wreckers' Cove for a doctor, but now put in for shelter, having abandoned hope of winning farther through the gale that night. Need o' haste? Ay; but what could men do? No time t' take a skiff t' Wreckers' Cove in a wind like this! 'Twould blow your hair off beyond the Tickle heads. Hard enough crossin' the run from Hapless Harbor. An' was there a cup o' tea an' a bed for the crew o' them? They'd be under way by dawn if the wind fell.

Ol' Tom Luther had t' have a doctor _somehow_, whatever come of it!

"h.e.l.lo, Joe!" cried the one.

Salim rose and bowed.

"Heared tell 't Hapless Harbor you was here-abouts."

"Much 'bliged," Salim responded, courteously, bowing again. "Ver' much 'bliged."

"Heared tell you sold a watch t' Jim Tuft's young one?"

"Ver' good watch," said Salim.

"Maybe," was the response.

Salim blew a puff of smoke with light grace toward the white rafters. He was quite serene; he antic.i.p.ated, now, a compliment, and was fas.h.i.+oning, of his inadequate English, a dignified sentence of acknowledgment.

"Anyhow," drawled the man from Catch-as-Catch-Can, "she won't go no more."

Salim looked up bewildered.