Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/171

160 who lived all day long waist-deep in water, and slept all night long on a wet sail, and not seldom crushed the seaweed between their bright hard teeth in the sheer desire of famine; and yet who, with all that, might have thanked God, had they known it, that they were born by the water's width and to the water's liberty, instead of in the stifling furnace of cities, where human lives breathe their first and their last, never having known what one breath of ocean wind blows like, or what the limitless delight of a horizon line can mean. They and their mothers said little, comprehended less. The shine of silver made their eyes glisten, but they could give nothing in return for it. Of the boats, there was not one left; not the craziest craft that ever was hauled high upon a beach to be broken up into firewood nor of the boys did one remain of years enough to handle a rope or hold a tiller.

He stood on the narrow strip of yellow sand, with the ripple of the foam rolling upward and over his feet, and looked over the sweet, fresh, tumultuous vastness of the waters as men, when camels and mules, and even the hardy sons of the soil, have perished one by one in their rear, look over the stretch of the desert where no aid is to be called, no