“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!_”
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 shining 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 snatched 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!”
[Illustration: 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!