“Cut it,” said Rio, his face hard. “Did you get him to the boat alive?”
“Yes,” answered Martin. “The nakhuda and another Arab hoisted him aboard and we laid him on the deck, out of the sun, with his head propped up. There were only minutes left, with nothing to do but magic; so I rubbed his wrists and whispered the Lord’s Prayer to him. It sounded all right on that blistering deck, or must have done so, for Sali kept smiling and repeating the words—the sound of the words after me.... ‘Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.’ ... Then his face changed—I saw it coming. He spoke thinly to the nakhuda, who knelt down and cut the string around the boy’s neck which held this amulet.” Martin pointed to the charm on his finger. “Sali took it, and with that hopeless, sweet trust glazed on his eyes forever, held it out to me that death-like second before death.”
Martin cleared his throat and looked down at the grass.
After watching him for a moment Rio said quietly, “That’s the last time I’ll ever ask about a ring. I done it once before, and I ought to know better.”
Rio took his time, and scanned the harbor before he spoke.
“I shipped out of Liverpool,” he said at last, “because I had to once, on a vessel bound for the Solomon Islands. My watch partner looked like a Limey, but he was a shanty Irishman from Philadelphia. I never could quite make ’im out. We had two hours in Lisbon on the trip South, and he give a kid two bits American to get off a spittoon in a Portugee gin mill. He told me it made him nervous, seein’ a boy sit like that. Well, we had some sour wine and some biscuits before I seen his ring. It was a wide gold band on his left middle finger, and somehow I asked him about it. He grinned and looked pretty sick; but he said it was for Maud. I took another drink and lit up a cigarette because I couldn’t see no woman with _him_. He called himself ‘Philadelphia Dick,’ but the city would’ve killed ’im for it, since he was the ugliest bastard I ever seen, with a skin like tripe and a red eyelid that hung down like a lantern over his left eye. He knowed I didn’t believe that Maud stuff, and that damned eyelid dropped down like he was laughin’ at me, while he chewed on a biscuit with the ring wigglin’ all the time under his Harp nose.