Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/354

328 find him regarding her with eyes she scarcely knew.

"Your own sword—in Phœnicia?"

"My own sword—you know it was mine,—and you remember,—don't you, can't you,—can't you remember,—why, every one has lived before, and from the first hour I knew you—"

"Seven days ago!" Miss Cleveland smiled suggestively.

"—from then I have known that this was my own sword, and that you and I,—on that very shore,—maybe three thousand years ago,—our real selves,—I mean,—you see—" This is the story:

LISSA, daughter of Ibrahim the merchant, was very beautiful, walking down the smoothed stone pathways of her father's garden, between the rows of green and the red pomegranate blooms, to where the cliffs looked on the sea. The clear sun's rays fell shimmering through the cedars and half pierced the fine, sheer whiteness of her robe, one end of which, to free her sandalled feet, hung over her left arm in folds that offered dainty prey to the wild sea airs. A band of pure and yellow gold held up her dense black hair, and about her waist a silver girdle, plucked from the treasures of the Tartessus, told with a modest candor of the tender lines within.

Turning the semicircle of the flowerbeds to reach the stone seats at the garden's end, Elissa saw already there the tall, broad figure of a swarthy man, dressed in a purple robe, its long folds stained with the deepest blood of the murdered murex—with that strange lustre, greater than the leopard-skins of Egypt, which had brought the monarch of the very Nile to these alluvial fields in trade.

"Who is there?" Elissa cried, yet knowing.

"Ahab the Pilot," he answered, turning his keen black eyes upon her with a gentle suddenness. "Dost thou not know me to-day?"

The girl's eyes answered his. "And thy sword?"

The taunt stung till his brown cheeks near bled.

"Thou knowest I have no sword, Elissa," he answered; and then, less humbly: "for my life is not the soldier's life. I brave dangers thy war-men never knew of. Do I not lead thy father's ships to Britain? Your warriors talk well with the women, and shed their blood in some great company, it is true; but go into the streets of Tyre this day and ask her merchants and her builders and her statesmen who it is has made Phœnicia glorious among nations, and they will tell thee Ahab the Pilot, who leads her ships at sea."

"But thou hast no sword." The girl smiled in pretty coquetry. Ahab's hot eyes took flame.

"It is the young soldiers of the King have set thee against me," he cried, running one hand, covered with gold and silver rings, over his face in a gesture of annoyance which made her laugh aloud. "Thou mayest laugh, Elissa, but thou art scorning a great love. When I was a lad I was put to the sea, and sailed many voyages in oared ships. And once, when a great storm blew us far away for many days, all on board were afraid, for we were near the Land of Demons, beyond Tartessus; and I feared too, but I held down my fear and took the ship's helm. And I steered her back to harbor, and they made me a pilot for that. Thou knowest, for thy father, who profiteth most by me, hath told thee, that now I am the greatest pilot in Phœnicia, and that no other hath ever taken ships to Britain safely. Thou knowest the Egyptians call me by great names, and that when the King gave me a stone house and twenty slaves, they offered me a marble palace, and a princess for my wife; and I stayed here that I might lead thy father's ships again to Britain. Thy soldier maketh nothing, only destruction. The pilot maketh the nation, giveth gold to the King to fight his wars, and dominions to rule over, and great cities full of riches. And Ahab, the greatest of pilots, is proud to say that he doth wear no sword."

Elissa paid small heed to her admirer's essay, but walking to a neighboring bush, plucked from it a flower. Ahab's heart sprang as he watched her, for she was very beautiful.

"This flower," she said, and pressed