第3章

"Your son returns! Allah has protected him! The ghins had no power over him, his agathodaemon watched over him! Allah be praised, Allah is great!"The boat comes on dancing over the water. The boy stands alone, no one to assist him in wielding his oar. He holds it firmly grasped in his hands, using it lustily, and steering in defiance of the waves toward the shore. And now the men hasten forward to his assistance.

They throw long ropes to him, and hail their success with a shout of joy, when one of them happily falls into the boy's boat. The latter grasps the end thrown to him, and holds it firmly. The men draw the rope and thus force the boat to the shore, and, as it touches the rock, ten arms grasp it and hold it securely. With a single bound the boy leaps ashore.

His face is perfectly calm; his eyes, lustrous as stars, show no traces of terror; they are fixed on the men with a kindly glance, but they darken as he turns to the boys.

"You see, my boys," said he, with a calm and at the same time threatening expression, "I have won my wager! Here is the proof that I was over there. The knife that Ibrahim lost there yesterday, Ibring back to him. Here it is!"

He takes the knife out of his jacket, thoroughly drenched with water, and throws it down before the boys. "I have won my wager! You men are witnesses of my triumph! Each boy is bound to pay me tribute from to-day. Each one must furnish me, twice a week, with the best peaches and dates from his garden, and when we go out to the chase they must obey me, and acknowledge me to be their captain."What triumph shone in his eyes, what an expression of energy in the bearing of a boy scarcely ten years old!

"That was it!" exclaimed Toussoun Aga, in a reproachful tone. "For this reason my brother's son risked his life, and caused his mother and all of us so much anxiety.--Allah forgive you! You are a wild, defiant boy.""No, uncle," cried the boy; "no, I am not wild and defiant. They ridiculed me, and said I was not as good as they, could do nothing, didn't even know how to steer a boat. And then we laid a wager, and I won my wager; and they shall pay the tribute, and acknowledge me to be their captain. I call all you men to witness that I am the captain of the boys of Cavalla."The men looked at each other, amused and astonished at the same time. He speaks like a child, and yet haughtily, like a monarch. His words are childish, and yet so full of energy. And many of them thought they could read in the book of the future that a great destiny awaited the poor boy Mohammed Ali. "He is poor, to be sure, and will have much hard fighting to do with the storms of life. May the same success he has met with against the storms of the sea to-day also attend him hereafter against the storms of life!"Toussoun Aga stretches out his hand to take that of his nephew Mohammed, to lead him to the rock above, to his mother, but the boy quickly rejects the proffered assistance.

"I can ascend the rock to my mother alone; I am not weak and terrified, uncle. Go on, I will follow."And, as he says this, he crosses his hands behind his back. The rest now cry out:

"Look at his hands! Look, they are bleeding!"Toussoun now takes the boy's hands in his own, against his will, and opens them. They are covered with blood, that oozes out of the raw flesh.

"It is nothing," said the boy; "nothing at all. I had to hold fast to the oar, the skin stuck to it, and that made my hands bleed."The men gaze on him admiringly, and whisper to each other: "He is a hero, if he is only ten years old." And they respectfully step back, and allow the boy to pass on up the rocky path that leads to Cavalla.