At last they came to terms. The dealer
received his living goods, young Osman Bey, and paid the captain the
price agreed upon.
If young Mohammed Ali could see this: if his dark brown eye could
send a glance with the speed of an arrow across the waves and
through the days and nights ; and if he could hear how the slave,
Osman Bey, is traded off for sugar and coffee; if he could see Osman
standing in the slave market awaiting a purchaser; if he could see
Mourad, the Mameluke bey, at last approach, smile approvingly on
young Osman, and finally purchase and place him among his followers;
if he could have seen this and the future, he would have felt proud
and happy in being a free man, although a poor one. His hands are
not fettered, he serves no master, and he cannot be bargained for
and sold like a bale of goods ! He is a free human being, conscious
of his own worth, and also conscious of the great future that awaits
him.
He is thinking of it now as he stands on the rock leaning on his
gun, and staring out into the air after the vanished ship. He does
not see the future; he only dreams of it as he looks out into the
vacant air, oblivious of the present. Nor does he see the mother,
who, while he stands there, is hastening painfully and breathlessly,
her head bowed down, from her humble but to the proud, main street
of the city, to the store of the merchant Lion.
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