Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made swift with his story;
And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
Embroidered with names of the Djinns--a miraculous weaving--
But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving.
So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture--
Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture--
Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed;
But on him be the Peace and the Blessing: for he was great-hearted!
THE CAPTIVE
"He that believeth shall not make haste."--_Isaiah_.
The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly
spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated militia-man,
rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. Between
the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the
beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war
bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and the electric-light poles rose
those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat on Simonstown. Beneath them the
little _Barracouta_ nodded to the big _Gibraltar_, and the old _Penelope_,
that in ten years has been bachelors' club, natural history museum,
kindergarten, and prison, rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. Far out, a
three-funnelled Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in
from the deep sea.
Said the sentry, assured of the visitor's good faith, "Talk to 'em? You
can, to any that speak English.
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