THE _MAYFLOWER_ PUTS TO SEA
Pascualo was on his way home from an afternoon in Valencia; but on
reaching the Glorieta, he stopped in front of the Old Customs House.
It was six o'clock. The sun was tinting the enormous front of the
building an orange gold, softening the colors of the greenish black
smudge that the rain had left on the mansard windows. The statue of
Charles II seemed to be melting into the mellow bluish transparency of
the light-filled atmosphere. Through the gratings drifted the hum of a
busy hive--voices calling, songs coming from a distance, the metallic
click of scissors as the workers picked them up or let them fall.
Out through the big entrance the girls from the nearest floors were
beginning to pour in animate throng--a horde of Indian shawls, a medley
of strong arms with sleeves rolled above the elbow, an army of
lunch-boxes slung over shoulders, a pitter-patter of feet, hopping in
short quick steps like sparrows, a hub-bub of good-nights, of greetings,
of parting gibes. The promenade for the guards, where a few drinking
fountains were the only obstructions, was one seething mass of feminine
youth.
The Rector, attracted by that curious riot of tobacco-girls, had paused
on the sidewalk across the street, among the newspaper stands. A strange
fascination it had for him, that moving mass of white handkerchiefs
drawn tightly over pretty foreheads! What a bedlam! A regiment of
females in mutiny! A nunnery gone mad! A meteor-shower of black eyes,
that stared at a man boldly, immodestly, stripping the clothes off one,
it seemed, with mocking effrontery!
And who was this coming in his direction? Roseta had spied him, and
deserting a party of girls, was tripping over toward him. Her companions
were to wait for friends from another floor, and they might be some
minutes in starting. Was he going home? All right! They would go
together! Roseta hated just standing around!
They took the Grao road, Pascualo moving his sea-legs frantically to
keep up with that devil of a girl who never walked but she ran, though
with an attractive swaying of her body which made her skirt go up and
down like the marking buoy in a yacht race. Shouldn't he carry her
lunch-box for her? Thanks! She was used to having it on her arm. Didn't
think she could walk so fast without it!
By the time they were at the Sea Bridge, the captain was on the subject
of his boat, as usual. That _Mayflower_ of his could even make him
forget he had a Dolores and a Pascualet! The next morning the
_bou_-fishing began, and all the vessels would go out. "But she's queen
of the lot! We hitched the oxen on to her yesterday, and now she's in
the water, anchored with the other boats in the harbor. But there's no
mistaking her, girl! She strikes your eye like a _senorita_ in the
middle of a bunch of beach-trailers!" He had been in town to get a few
odds and ends still lacking to his equipment. Now he had a dollar to bet
that not one of the rich men in the Cabanal, who sat around at home and
got the best of every load of fish without lifting a finger, could show
a craft half the witch the _Mayflower_ was ... not half.
But the end which comes to everything in this world came also to the
store of nice things the Rector had to say, in his enthusiasm, about his
boat. By the time the pair had reached the bakery of Figuetes, Pascualo
had lapsed into his normal taciturnity, and Roseta held the floor,
dealing with the forewomen in the tobacco factory in terms that such
cattle deserved.
"Work the life out of you, they do! It was all I could do to keep myself
from waiting outside and pulling the topknot of that wench as she came
out! I don't mind about myself so much. Mama and me can get along on
nothing almost. But it's different with others of us. Why, some of
those girls have to sweat like niggers, to feed some loafer of a
husband, and a houseful of brats that wait at the door at night with
their mouths wide open to swallow half the bread in town! What I don't
see is how, in conditions like that, there's a woman left in the world
who can laugh. For instance ..." And the golden-haired Diana, so
insensible to the allurements of men, but reared withal among the
filthy-mouthed ragamuffins of the seashore, struck an air of stern and
serious modesty, and recounted in words of disconcerting directness, but
with a rippling sweetness of tone that seemed to wipe the foulness of
such language from her cheery lips, the story of a shopmate of hers at
home with a broken arm, after a beating from her husband, who had caught
her in flagrant wrong-doing with a friend of his! "I wouldn't call her
much of a woman, I wouldn't!" and the virtuous Roseta pouted the pout of
a virgin who knows all there is to know. "What a disgrace! And she had
four children--four!"
The Rector smiled a ferocious smile. "So she got out of it with a broken
arm, did she! I'd have broken her neck, I would! No half-way business
with these women that don't know what belongs to their husband and what
belongs to the other fellow! Imagine living with a thing like that!
Thank God, I didn't draw one of that kind. I've got a good wife and a
happy home!" "Yes, you can thank God, all right," Roseta assented with
one of her smiles of compassionate contempt. But the Rector was not spry
of wit. And the finer shadings of irony escaped him.
But as the simple-minded sailor walked along, he grew more and more
excited at the outrageous conduct of that woman he didn't know and at
the misfortune of that husband whose name he had never heard. "You know,
a rotten business like that gets under my skin, it does. Here's an
honest man breaking his back from morning till night to feed his woman
and his boys and his girls, and comes home from the shop and finds my
lady flouncing around with Mr. 'Friend'! God, girl! I'd cut the wench's
throat, I would--if I swung for it! If you ask me, I say--well, whose
fault is it? The women! Yes, the women! What was a woman ever put on
this earth for, except to damn a man's soul! _Dios!_ I never saw but two
decent women, anyhow. One is Dolores, and the other is you!" For the
Rector, when he talked so extensively, was inclined to go to extremes,
and he felt this time that his sweeping denunciation needed that much
qualification.
Though much good the concession did him! For his sister was now on
ground where, from the long tirades of _Sina_ Tona, she could be counted
quite expert. She talked passionately, with a tinge of irritation in
her sweet vibrant voice. "Women, eh! Women! Not a bit of it! It's the
men, I say, and I know what I'm talking about. Among the pigs in this
world, the prize hog is the man! See trouble anywhere? Look and you'll
find a man at the bottom of it. Mama says so, too. There are two kinds
of men in this world--scamps and puddingheads! If a woman goes wrong,
it's the man that's to blame. If she's not married they are all after
her to get what they want ... and maybe I don't know that! If I was the
fool some men take me for, God knows the fix I'd be in to-day! And if
you are married, well, it's worse, almost--for the scamps try to get you
into trouble, and the puddingheads haven't sense enough to keep their
wives where they belong. Look at Tonet, for instance! Wouldn't Rosario
be serving him right if she went on the street, even, to get square with
him for all he does! And then, well, no! Stop at Tonet! We don't need to
give other examples! But the whole Cabanal knows about husbands that are
themselves to blame if their wives aren't all they ought to be!"
And the girl leered at the Rector so unguardedly, in saying this, that
Pascualo, in spite of his corpulent obtuseness, caught the glimmer of an
allusion and studied her face enquiringly. But his immense faith, at
bottom, in people and in things stood him in good stead against any
dangerous inference. And he protested, mildly, at her exaggeration.
Bosh! People in the Cabanal made him sick! They were always talking
about somebody, to pass the time. If you listened to what people said,
there wasn't a decent woman in town, nor a husband that wasn't the joke
of the beach. But that's only a way they had of amusing themselves. The
Cabanal had no manners, as don Santiago, the curate, said so well! "Now,
take me, for instance. I've got the best, sweetest wife in the world,
and everybody knows it! Well, does that keep those fools from blabbing
about her? And who's the man? Tonet, may it please the court! Tonet, of
all men! The people in the Cabanal are donkeys, idiots, rotters, that's
all! Tonet, God save us! Why, Tonet ... he worships Dolores, like a
mother.... But no, my house has simply got to be a brothel, for those
chatter-boxes.... Tonet! God!" And the Rector laughed one of those
hearty laughs of pitying superiority at the stupidity of people, the
kind of laugh the Spanish peasant gives when he hears some benighted
ignoramus questioning the authenticity of the village Virgin's miracles.
Roseta stopped short in her tracks, sizing up the Rector with those
dreamy sea-green eyes of hers. What did that laugh mean? Was Pascudo
serious? Yes, without a doubt. As serious as a preacher! That
puddinghead was proof-proof! And the certainty angered her.
Instinctively, without reckoning the consequences of what she was
doing, she came out with the charges that had been tickling her tongue
for years! In short: two kinds of men, scamps and puddingheads! And a
glance of hers stamped the second label upon her brother, as he, in
fact, divined.
"So I'm the puddinghead, am I! Hah-hah!... Now see here, Roseta ... out
with it! All you know! And no mincing of words, either, or you'll be
sorry!"
They were half-way home now, near the roadside Cross. And they stopped a
moment in front of it. The Rector's ruddy face had turned pale as death,
and he kept biting nervously at his fingers, those blunt, bony,
calloused fingers of a fisherman.
"Well, Roseta," he added, when she stood silent still. "Out with it!"
But the girl did not come out with it. She had caught a dangerous gleam
in her brother's eye. She was afraid she had gone too far; and, a kindly
soul at heart, she repented her imprudent innuendos. She had caused the
pallor and the expression of fierce solemnity on that good-natured face!
"Oh, as for knowing, Pascualo, I don't know anything. It's only what
people say. But they say lots of things. And if you want them to stop
talking, I'd advise you to have Tonet around your house as little, as
little, as possible!"
Pascualo had stooped over the watering-trough near the Cross, and
covered the whole end of the pipe with his mouth, to let the stream run
full into his stomach, as though to drown a conflagration that was
burning in his insides. He straightened up and started on, the water
dripping down over his chin, till he wiped it away with the back of a
rough hand.
"I see. So that's all talk! Well, if they want to wait for me to be
nasty to Tonet, they can wait till hell freezes over. Filthy, stupid,
malicious chatter-boxes! That's what they are! So I must slam the door
in the face of that poor boy, eh! Well, I won't! Just when he's settling
down a bit, from the good influence Dolores has over him! And they're
all jealous of her, that's what. Just plain jealous!" And the gesture
with which he underlined the spiteful words seemed to include Roseta
among the envious. "Well, it's my affair, and so long as I don't worry,
they needn't. Let them talk their tongues off. That boy is what amounts
to a son to me. Why, it seems only yesterday when I was carrying him
around in my arms, like a nurse. And when he went to bed at night, I'd
roll up in a ball almost, so's he could have plenty of room. And now I'm
to kick him out of my house. No, you don't forget some things in a
hurry. Oh, yes, when things go right and there's no trouble, you forget
easy enough. You forget the fellows you used to drink with in the
taverns. But we used to be hungry together, _redeu_, hungry; and you
don't forget times like that. Poor Tonet! No! I'm going to stand by
that boy till I get him on his feet and make a man of him, I am. What do
they think!... That I'm an ox, probably, a plain damn fool! All right,
but this damn fool has got a heart under his ribs, he has." And the
Rector, filling with deeper and deeper emotion, rapped on that
well-padded chest of his, and his thorax echoed like a drum.
For as much as a quarter of an hour the two of them walked on in
silence, Roseta frightened at the possible outcome of their
conversation; Pascualo, in a gloomy mood, stumbling along with lowered
head and frowning darkly whenever he raised his eyes, clenching his
fists as though in struggle with an evil thought that would not down.
Thus they reached the Grao and were through it before either of them
spoke.
"And anyhow, Roseta," said the Rector at last, from sheer necessity of
giving some expression to the anguished meditations that were writhing
within him, "and anyhow, it's just as well that it is mere talk. For if
I should find some day, that it's more than that ... _recristo_, nobody
really knows who I am! I'm afraid of myself, sometimes! I'm an
easy-going sort of chap, and never go around looking for trouble. I even
yield a point down on the beach, now and then, because I've a boy to
look out for and have never cared to play the bully, or the tough. But
there are two things in this world that I have, and that I call mine: my
money, and my wife. Let no one dare lay a finger on either of them. On
the way back from Algiers, with that load, I was afraid once the cutter
was going to get us. And do you know what I had made up my mind to do?
Back up against the mast there, with my knife out, and kill and kill and
kill, till they cut me down on top of those bales of 'mayflower' that
for me meant fortune. And then Dolores ... at times when I thought how
nice she looked and what a good woman she was, something of the great
lady about her--I don't know what--that makes her so wonderful, it
occurred to me--why not say it right out?--that some fellow, some day,
might try to get her away from me. Well, sir, I could have throttled her
almost, at the mere idea of such a thing, and then gone out raving
through the streets like a mad dog. I guess that's what I'm like,
Roseta, a dog; so good-natured, so harmless, ordinarily, but able to
clean the town up when he goes mad, so's they have to kill him. Well,
that's the point! They'd better let me alone, and not go monkeying with
my happiness, nor with what I've got together with my own hard work...."
There was a drawn expression on his face as he looked at Roseta after
this tirade, a veritable oration for the phlegmatic Rector; and the poor
girl felt as if she were being accused of the attempted theft of
Dolores.
But Pascualo suddenly, with a gesture of disdain, seemed to come out of
his abstraction; and it was evident he felt ashamed at having lost hold
on his tongue so far, in a moment of baseless alarm. He had had enough
of Roseta, however. And, in fact, they could separate there. "Remember
me to mother!" he said, as he turned down to the beach, leaving his
sister to go on alone along the road toward the tavern-boat. But it was
late that night before the influence of that disquieting conversation
was lifted from Pascualo's mind. Tonet was at home when he arrived, but
did not seem at all embarrassed in his presence. All a lie, of course!
One look at the boy was enough to show that! The Rector looked
searchingly into his own heart, and could find no trace of suspicion
there. Nothing to it, absolutely, absolutely, nothing! And when, the men
of the crew dropped in to get their final orders for the next day, he
had forgotten the matter completely.
He had hired a boat to work in team with the _Mayflower_, though, with
dog's luck, he would some day be able to build another just like her!
Among the men was an old sailor whom the Rector listened to with
profoundest respect. _Tio_ Batiste was the oldest tar in the whole
Cabanal. Seventy years of sailoring were stuffed into that sun-dried
crackling hide of his, whence they issued, smelling to heaven of strong
tobacco, in the form of practical suggestions and maritime prophecy.
Pascualo had taken him on, not so much for the help his aged arms could
give, as for the exact knowledge he had of the coast thereabouts. From
the Cabo de San Antonio to the Cabo de Canet, the gulf did not have a
hole nor a shallow that _tio_ Batiste did not know all about. Turn him
into a smelt and toss him overboard, and he'd tell you where he was, the
minute he got to the bottom! The top of the water might be a closed book
to other people; but he could read, from the looks of it, just what
there was underneath.
He would sit up forward on the boat, and describe the bumps on the
bottom as though he were on a wagon roughing the road-ruts. With one
glance he could tell whether your boat was over the kelp grounds, or
over the mud-banks, called _El Fanch_, or over those mysterious
submarine hillocks, called the _Pedrusquets_, where the fishermen were
always in terror of losing their nets on the sharp crags that cut the
seines to shreds. Between the _Muralls de Confit_, the _Bareta de
Casaret_ and the _Roca de Espioca_, lay deep tortuous gullies far down
under the sea. _Tio_ Batiste could drag a net through the winding
channel there without catching on a single rock, and without scooping up
a mass of kelp that would break your tackle through. A dark night of
fog! Not a lighthouse visible! Thick gloom ten feet ahead! One taste of
the mud on your net, and the old wizard would say where you were to a
hundred yards. Only a salmon or a squid could have been the teachers of
that wondrous learning! And _tio_ Batiste knew many other useful
things--that you should not cast your seine on Hallowe'en, for instance,
unless you wanted to bring up a corpse; or that the man who carried the
Cross of the Grao on Good Friday would never die at sea.
For that matter he had spent all his life on shipboard. By the time he
was ten, he could show callouses under his arm-pits, from hauling at the
lines. He had a dozen trips to Cuba to his credit--not the kind of trips
youngsters brag about nowadays, because they've been across as waiters
or barbers on a big liner--but real voyages, in good old-fashioned
_faluchas_, better built than they make them now, that went out with
wine and came back with sugar, and were owned by gentlemen in cape-coats
and top-hats! And every trip with a lamp on board, lighted at the wick
floating in the oil bowl before the Christ of the Grao! And a rosary
every night on board, without fail, unless you wanted something awful to
happen! Those were the days, according to _tio_ Batiste, the real days,
for sailormen. And as he cursed on, the wrinkles would wiggle all over
his face, and his ancient goatee would whip up and down; while vicious
bits of forecastle obscenity would punctuate his contempt for the
irreligion and the conceit of the younger generation of salts.
Pascualo liked to hear the old man talk. There was something of his old
master, _tio_ Borrasca, about him, and the man reminded him of his
father, old Pascualo, too. Though the other members of the crew, Tonet,
two sailors and the "cat," made fun of the venerable tar, and tried to
get him angry all the time by assuring him he was too old for the
business now, and that the curate would be willing to take him on as
sacristan. _Chentola!_ Too old for real work, eh! Wait till they got out
to sea, and they'd whistle another tune! The boys of these days don't
know what a wind is! He'd be fanning himself, while they'd be calling
for mama!
The next morning all the Cabin section was in motion. The _bou_-boats
would put to sea that evening after sundown--taking the men-folks
offshore for their honest battle with the elements for bread. An annual
migration of husbands, brothers and sons, this; but, nevertheless, the
women, thinking of the months of worry and uneasiness they would have
ahead of them till spring, could never take the event very calmly.
Captains were bustling about with their last preparations. They went
down to the harbor to look over their boats, test the pulleys, run the
lines, raise and lower the sails, pound the bottom over inside, be sure
the supplies of rope and canvas were on hand, count baskets, examine
nets. And when inventories were complete they would have still to go
back to the office to get clearance papers from all those stuck-up
fellows in white collars who could hardly speak to a workingman
decently!
When the Rector went home for dinner at noontime, he found _sina_ Tona
in the kitchen talking to Dolores, weeping her eyes out, and patting a
bundle she held across her knees. When she saw her son coming, she began
at him angrily. "I've just heard, and it's a pretty father you are! So
Pascualet is going 'cat' on the _Mayflower_! A boy of eight, who might
better be at home with his mother, or at least playing down at the
tavern with me! The idea! A baby like that going to sea and made to do a
man's work, and Lord knows what else! Well, I'm not going to stand it,
I'm not! That's not the way to treat a child! And since his mother don't
dare open her head, and his father is actually the one to blame, his
grandma must take a hand! I've come to get Pascualet and take him home
with me. I won't allow such a thing. Pascualet! Pascualet! Your
grandmother wants to see you."
Pascualet came in, the little devil, swallowed up in a suit of yellow
baize, barefoot, to be more in character, and with a sash that passed
almost under his arm-pits and made his blouse bulge out like a balloon.
Cocking his black cap down over one ear, he began to strut up and down
in front of the women, imitating the tough and independent manner of
_tio_ Batiste, and trying to put some of that worthy's picturesque
obscenity into the insults he heaped upon his grandmother for her
efforts in his behalf. "I'm through playing at the tavern! You can keep
your bread and cheese! I'm a man now, I am; and I'm going 'cat' in the
_Mayflower_!"
His father and mother were in convulsions at the saucy antics of this
chip of the old block. As for the Rector, he could have eaten the boy
alive with kisses. But _sina_ Tona could only bawl and bawl like a
cry-baby, till her son got really angry. "Mama, will you stop that
noise! What do you think we are doing to the boy, cutting his throat?
The world isn't coming to an end! Pascualet is just going to sea, the
way his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather did. What do
you want to make of him? A tramp? No, I want him to be a man of pluck,
and able to do a day's work, and not be afraid of salt water, where his
living is likely to be. If I can leave him a little bit, when I pass on,
so much the better; but he ought to be ready to look out for himself.
He'll be in no danger. But if he gets to know what a boat is, he'll go
to it with his eyes open. Any one can have an accident, afloat or
ashore. Just because my father ended the way he did is no signs we're
all to end that way. Too much bawling around here! Give us a rest, will
you!"
But _sina_ Tona knew they were all possessed of the devil! The sea had
her eye on the whole family, and would get them all, finally! She hadn't
slept a wink for nights--and the most frightful dreams! Worry and worry
about your son! And then you find they're taking the baby, too. No, she
couldn't stand it any more. They were bound to kill her with worry and
sorrow! If they weren't her children, she wouldn't look them in the
face, they were so brutal!
But the Rector, letting the old lady grumble on, sat down to his bowl of
steaming soup. "What do you say to dinner, Pascualet! Don't mind her!
Your daddy is going to make the best sailor in the Cabanal out of you!
Tell us, mama, what you got in that bundle?"
_Sina_ Tona boo-hooed louder than ever at the joking question. A
present! A little present, that was all! She thought it would ease her
mind. So she had taken what money she had saved--a few pennies it
was--and had bought something for him. A life-preserver! A neighbor of
hers had gotten it from an engineer on an English steamer! And she
produced the huge vest of padded cork, which folded up so easily along
the seams! The Rector looked at the strange mechanism and smiled. Did
you ever! What things people could think of! "I'd heard there were rigs
like that in the world, but I never saw one before. Glad to have it
aboard, though I can swim like a fish, myself, and never do it in
uniform!" And he was tickled to death, at bottom. He left his soup and
tried the life-belt on, laughing at his own stoggy appearance in it; for
it made his already generous allowance of paunch still more conspicuous,
and he ended by looking and puffing like a seal--for the straps made it
hard for him to breathe. "Thanks, thanks! I'll not drown in this. I'll
simply strangle. But the _Mayflower_ will like to have it!" And he
dropped it to the floor. When Pascualet, tugging and straining, finally
got the thing on, his head and feet barely extended beyond the cork
armor. He was a tortoise in a shell, for all the world!
The meal was almost over, when Tonet came in, with a huge bandage around
his hand. He had just had a bad blow, that morning; and he reported the
news in such a way, that his brother did not see fit to ask how nor why;
nor was the Rector sharp enough to note the self-conscious expression on
the face of Dolores. Up to his usual tricks, that boy! Probably been in
another fight in some drinking-place! "But what do you expect you'll be
good for outside? All trussed up like that! Never mind this trip. We
won't be out more than a day or two, if we have any kind of luck. We'll
take you day after to-morrow, or next day!" The Rector talked on very
calmly. That temper of his was hard to ruffle! But Tonet and Dolores sat
looking at the floor, as though they were ashamed of something.
At four o'clock, the final preparations for the sailing of the fleet
began. The _bou_-boats, two by two, were moored to the harbor wharfs,
dipping their masts on the swell as though curtseying to the people
ashore, while their hulls went up and down in graceful undulation. Those
tiny sea-dogs, with their rough profiles of ancient galleys, made one
think of the old armadas of Aragon, or of the fleets of doughty pinnaces
with which Roger de Lauria used to spread terror along the coasts of
Sicily. And the fishermen, too, as they came down, crew by crew, their
clothes and blankets in rolls over their backs, looked like the bands of
_almogavars_ that gathered, of old, on the beach of Salou, to sail, in
like craft or worse ones, to the conquest of Majorca. A savor of the
historic, of the antique, hovered about that fleet and about each
separate craft, which took you back, perforce, to sea legends of the
Middle Ages, when the triangular sails of Aragon were as dreaded of the
Moors of Andalusia as of the isles that lay smiling in the classic seas
of Greece.
The whole village was down on the shore. Women and children were running
here and there, trying to identify, in the forests of masts, of
crossing and criss-crossing cordage, the boats where their own men were.
It was the annual excursion into the deserts of the sea, the recurring
foray out into danger to snatch bread from the mysteries of the deep,
which sometimes gives up its treasures peacefully and without a
struggle, but at others hangs on to them and threatens the plucky
Argonaut with death.
Down over the gang-planks from wharf to deck moved a procession of bare
feet, yellow trousers, sun-baked faces, all that miserable flock of
human beings who are born, live and die, on that shore there, knowing
nothing of the world that lies beyond that blue horizon. Hunger, on the
starting-line, as it were, for a race with death at the signal of
opulence! Men condemned to ignorance and filth and danger, that, inland,
other men may sit down before glossy linen table-cloths, and feel their
mouths water before a succulent lobster's claw on a creamy cod swimming
in luscious sauce!
The sun was hanging low. The last flies of summer, their huge bellies
swollen and their wings sluggish, were buzzing about in the golden
afternoon, gleaming with a sputtering fire. Away to the horizon, which
the peak of the Mongo broke with a blotch of haze, like an island
floating in the distance, the sea stretched calm and tranquil. Good
weather! Good weather! That was the burden of every woman's tongue, as
the boats swallowed up crew after crew. With good luck, there would soon
be good things a-plenty in every house! Now the "cats" were almost the
only sailors left on shore. They were still running up and down the
wharves, stamping barefoot on the pitchy floorings, doing the last
errands of the captains, putting the hard-tack aboard, and a final cask
of wine!
And the sun was down. Everybody--more than a thousand men in all, there
were--was now on board. The boats were waiting only for the papers to
come down from the offices. How slow those lubbers worked! The
spectators on shore were beginning to get impatient, as though the
curtain were late in rising on a show.
For still one ceremony had not yet been completed. From time immemorial
it had been the custom of the whole village to wish the _bou_-fleet
godspeed by insulting the men who were going away. As the boats cast
off, atrocious witticisms flew back and forth between deck and
shore--all in good humor, of course, for such tradition would have it,
and it was a test of brains, besides, to be able to say just the right
word to those _lanudos_, those husbands whose eyes would be snugly
plugged with wool, and come home in blessed ignorance of all their wives
had been up to meanwhile! This theme of the wayward wife and the
unsuspecting husband is the commonest sport--however cruel it may
seem--along the shores of the Levant; and so inveterate the habit, so
inevitable the parting serenade, that some of the departing sailors went
aboard with pockets or baskets full of stones, to be ready for any
thrusts they could not parry with words.
And the last of the after-glow had faded. The lamps along the wharves
gleamed like a rosary of fire. Red snakes of light coiled and writhed
out over the placid waters of the basin. Stars, green and scarlet, shone
from the peak of every mast. The sea was catching the ashen brightness
of the nocturnal sky, and boats and buildings stood out in dark outlines
of indigo against a vast background of nickel gray. "They're off!
They're off!" Sails were being hoisted one by one, and in the night the
canvas filtered the harbor lights as through veils of distended crepe,
or translucent wings of great black butterflies.
Swarming mobs of ragamuffins had occupied the points farthest projecting
seaward. That would give their gibes the greatest possible range. And
what fun it would be! But all ready to duck I They've got plenty of
stones aboard to-night!
Slowly, gently, with barely perceptible motion in that breath of air,
the first pair of boats drew out from the wharf-side, nodding idly on
the swells like lazy bulls reluctant to make their dash. It was still
possible from the piers to identify the teams and the men aboard them.
"Good-by! Good-by!" the women called to their husbands. "_Adios! Bon
viache!_" But the youngsters were already at it, shrieking obscenities
into the night in a tumultuous uproar. "Did you ever hear such talk!"
Though the very wives who caught allusions to themselves laughed as
loudly as any one at the most happy scores. It was one carnival of free
language, where truth ran riot with slander.
"_Lanudos!_ Worse than _lanudos_! I know where the curate is going to
stay to-night! Johnnie will take good care of her, don't worry, my lad!
Moo-oo! Moo-oo!" And this mooing of cattle was supposed to evoke the
image of well-horned oxen in the minds of those brave sailors who were
thus being cheered on their way out into peril. But then the stones
began to come, whistling like bullets and striking sparks on the rocks
where the serenaders were seeking cover. The greatest uproar was at the
end of the Breakwater near which every boat had to pass on its way out
from the basin. And when the volleys of jest would slacken from the
shore, provocation would come from the boats themselves. The sailors
seemed offended if their team went past without attention. "And you've
nothing to say to us, eh!" some stentorian voice of an old tar would
call. "_Lanudos! Lanudos!_" the answer would come in a storm of
shouting, while the "cats" on board would begin to blow on the conches,
which the boats used at sea in time of dark or fog.
On one of the rocks, in the full midst of a noisy crowd, and quite
indifferent to the flying stones, stood Dolores, alone. The women who
had gone down to the shore with her kept farther back away from the line
of fire. Yet she was not quite alone. For a man had sauntered carelessly
in her direction and finally stopped behind her. The splendid creature
felt the warmth of Tenet's breath upon her neck, and her skin tingled
under that burning contact. She turned her head and caught one fiery
glance from his hungry eyes. And the bandaged hand, which had been
drawing feigned groans of pain a few hours before, sought hers in the
darkness. Free at last! For once, free! Free from fear of surprise, from
thoughts of danger! Neither the Rector nor his son would be at home!
But a sudden shouting of redoubled violence awakened them from their
swooning dream of guilty anticipation. "The Rector! There he goes! _Flor
de Mayo!_ 'Mayflower'!" And the most rousing of all the send-offs was
for him. It was not only the young ones this time. Grown-ups, men and
women, joined in the scathing jollity. For Dolores, the beautiful,
Dolores, the bewitching, had her enemies in that throng of jealous
wives. "Hey, the Rector! Hey, the prize-_lanudo_! A _toreador_ for you,
when you come home! The devil will want you, for the horns you'll have!
Is it Jersey or Holstein? Or just any old steer, except a short-horn!
And we're telling the truth, for once!"
Tonet grew uneasy. He was in plain sight of the throng. Some one might
carry the joke too far! But Dolores showed herself a true daughter of
_tio_ Paella! She laughed and laughed, as though the best compliments of
the sailing had been for her.
And the Rector was delighted. He had always thought himself the most
popular man in town! "And what else have you got to say, mutton-heads?"
he challenged, as his boat glided slowly along the shore, his moon-face
beaming over the varnished stern of the _Mayflower_. "What else have you
got to say!" That bravado gave impetus to the pointed insolence on the
Breakwater. "Look at them over there? Tonet is with Dolores! Tonet is
with Dolores! _Lanudo!_ Cuckold! He's leaving a happy home to-night! But
Tonet will be there! No vacation for Dolores!"
The Rector let go the tiller and stood up on the stern, livid with
anger! "Pigs, hogs, grunters! _Morrals! Cochinos!_"
It was all very well to make fun of him. But this bringing the name of a
woman in, and his brother's too, was going a bit too strong, a bit too
strong!