“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 passionless 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 shining 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.
“By damn!” he thought, savagely, “’tis—’tis—_mine_!”
The character of the exclamation is to be condoned; this sense of ownership had come like a vision.
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.
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.