"AND STILL THEY SAY FISH COMES HIGH!"
Four hours later the _Mayflower_ was off Sagunto in the channel which
_tio_ Batiste, with his habit of judging more from the bottom than from
landmarks on shore, was tracing between the _Roca del Puig_ and the kelp
grounds of Murviedro. Not a boat had dared go so far from home that day.
The rest of the fleet could be dimly seen, strung out on the horizon in
a wide arc from in front of Valencia to the offings of Cullera. The sky
was a leaden gray; the sea a deep purple, turning to an ebony black in
the troughs of the waves. The wind came in a succession of long frigid
squalls that whipped the sails about and whistled through the rigging.
The _Mayflower_ and its running mate kept on, however, under full sail,
dragging the _bou_-net that was getting heavier and heavier from minute
to minute.
The Rector was posted astern, at the tiller, heading the _Mayflower_
into the menacing gusts, more from instinct than anything else; for his
eyes were not on the water. They were fixed on Tonet, who had been
trying to avoid their piercing gaze ever since the boat left shore. At
times they would shift to little Pascualet, who was standing rigid at
the foot of the mast, throwing his diminutive chest out in challenge to
that sea, which, on his second voyage, was beginning to show its temper.
The _Mayflower_ was now pitching heavily as the waves came stronger and
stronger; but the sailors sauntered casually back and forth about their
work, as if nothing unusual were going on, though a false step would
have thrown them overboard.
The Rector looked from Tonet to the boy and from the boy to Tonet. An
expression of doubt gradually changing to conviction was written on his
face, as he compared them feature by feature, minutely. No, Rosario had
not deceived him. Where had his eyes been all those years not to have
noticed the astonishing resemblance? And Pascualo's face grew paler and
paler under its deep sunburn; his eyes were blood-shot as they had been
the night before, and he pressed his lips tightly together to hold in
the angry words that were tingling on his tongue and gathering in his
throat. God, how people must have been laughing at him! Look at the boy!
The very same face, the very same ways! Who could mistake them?
Pascualet was little Tonet all over again, the frail nervous child he
had tended like a nurse-maid in the tavern-boat. No, that was Tonet's
boy, no use denying it, the living, visible proof of his dishonor! And
as this conclusion settled deeper in the skipper's mind, he tore at the
flesh through his open shirt front, and frowned with sullen animosity at
the water, the boat, and the sailors, who kept looking at him out of the
corners of their eyes, wondering why the captain was in such a black
temper, though it was owing probably to the weather.
And why should he go on slaving like a dog? To earn money for that wench
of a woman who had been making a public fool of him all this time? And
create a future for Pascualet, leave him the richest fisherman in the
Cabanal? No, no, no! There was nothing left for him to live for. Die,
then, and take with him to destruction all he had been working for! and
the _Mayflower_, his other child, that he talked to as he would have to
a daughter--yes, her, too, away with her, and perish with her the very
memory of the sweet hopes and dreams that had gone into the building of
her. He wished to God that one of those big waves, instead of filling
under the boat's bow and throwing her rudely about on its foaming crest,
would open underneath her keel and let her drop to the bottom.
A signal came from the _Mayflower's_ teammate. The net was dragging so
heavy now from the huge catch inside that the boats were making scarcely
any headway. Wasn't it about time to haul her in? Pascualo smiled
bitterly! What the devil did he care! Certainly, haul her in when you
please! The crew began pulling at the cable that stretched from the
lower edge of the net to either boat, and they pulled and pulled
joyously. In spite of the wet weather and the back-breaking exertion,
Tonet and the sailors were in great glee. This was something like a
haul! A hundredweight at every foot!
But _tio_ Batiste, from his place on the tip of the bow, where every
dash of spray was reaching him, gave a sudden call:
"Look, Pascualo, Pascualo! Look! There she comes! There she comes!"
The old fisherman was pointing to the horizon, where the leaden mantle
of cloud seemed to be condensing into a blackish vapor. The Rector had
been watching the men hauling at the net. The little boy and Tonet
happened to be standing side by side, and the resemblance between them
was more striking than ever.
"Pascualo, man alive! Pascualo!"
"What's up!" the Rector answered, coming to himself.
"The hurricane! It's coming! It's on top of us!"
The mass of black was driving rapidly nearer, and spreading out as it
advanced. Overhead a livid flash of lightning seemed to rend the sky in
twain, and the thunder crashed, as though a huge piece of canvas had
been ripped asunder. And a moment after, the _levante_ itself, that
dread easterly gale that never blows in the Gulf of Valencia but with
the breath of doom!
As the tornado struck the _Mayflower,_ the vessel went over on her beam
ends as though a giant hand had seized her by the keel and were trying
to roll her over. The water came up over the lee rail almost to the
hatches. The great lateen sail was flat on the sea like a sheet. Then as
the vessel righted partly, down again, and again!
All this was the work of an instant. The first tremendous blast of the
hurricane had caught the sail full, and about capsized the boat. But
_tio_ Batiste and the Rector scrambled along the almost perpendicular
deck to the mast, loosened the peak-halyards and let the yard down.
Freed from the pressure of the sail, the _Mayflower_ came back to an
even keel with the next wave. But Pascualo had had to let go the tiller,
and the boat was wallowing in the trough, spinning round and round like
a top in the boiling waters. The Rector was crawling back to the helm,
with the idea of putting the _Mayflower's_ head to the wind. She would
not come round, however. The heavy net now held her fast by the stern,
though a moment before it had kept the vessel from foundering by acting
as a counter to the violent pulling of the sail.
The skipper looked around for his running mate. She came booming down
the wind, dismasted, her sail overboard, her stern to the blow. She had
cut loose from the net to keep from going over and was being tossed to
leeward by the gale. The waves piled up behind her steep as walls, the
tops blowing off every one of them and crashing down on her decks in a
deafening roar. But she had done well, all the same. The _Mayflower,_
too, must get free from the seine, and try to make Valencia. A knife was
laid to the cable. It snapped at the next pitch of the vessel, which,
with the tiller hard down, came round into the wind. The sail had
slipped down to the deck, the cross-boom sticking within easy reach of
the hand. But that bit of canvas caught the hurricane with tremendous
force, bending the mast threateningly and giving considerable headway to
the _Mayflower_, which was taking every comber over forward.
In that critical extremity the Rector became his real self again. "All
hands, attention! Obey orders, and be quick about it. We've got to come
about!" That was the supreme moment. If one of those water-mountains
caught her abeam, it would all be over in a second. Pascualo, upright,
his feet glued to the deck, had his eyes on the waves ahead, studying
every comber carefully as it swept toward the vessel. He was looking for
a smooth one among those driving ridges of water--some pocket in the
gale, which would enable him to swing around without turning turtle.
"Now, now, now ... ah ... ah ... ah!"
The _Mayflower_ veered like a shot, sank into a great yawning chasm
between two smooth but almost perpendicular walls, and she had her stern
to windward just as the next huge breaker came, lifting the whole vessel
aft, shoving her nose under forward, and tossing her to leeward as with
a mighty punch in the back. Trembling, staggering, she broke free. The
crew, catching their breath from the terror of the moment, looked out
after the great green mountain as it passed on. They saw it curve in a
somber arch of emerald over the other craft, dismantled, that was
drifting helpless before the storm. The enormous comber broke, like a
mine exploding, with cataracts of foam, and water thrown on high in
columns. And when the giant, literally blown to pieces by the gale, had
disappeared, to be followed by other billows just as noisy and just as
high, the surface of the sea was bare, save for a piece of timber and a
barrel with the head gone.
"_Requiescat in pace!_" _tio Batiste_ murmured crossing himself and
lowering his head. Tonet and the two sailors, pale and haggard, answered
instinctively: "_Amen!_"
"_Pare! Pare!_" Pascualet was calling in terror, pointing toward the
bow. The other "cat," his comrade, had been there when the _Mayflower_
started to plunge. Now he was gone! The great Destroyer had swept him
overboard, and no one had seen! Panic seized on the crew, in that
ghastly moment of supreme peril. The deafening thunder claps followed
one on the heels of the other. Chain-lightning hissed and snapped close
by in all directions over the leaden sky, snakes of fire that seemed to
be darting into the water to quench their flaming entrails; and the
bangs of thunder came, some of them short, crackling like the roll of
musketry; others deep, prolonged, booming. The rain was coming down in a
torrential cascade, as though the sky were trying to fill up the valleys
in the sea and make its power more violent.
But the Rector took the crew in hand. "God, have we sailors or women
aboard here? And you came from the Cabanal, and are afraid of a bit of
sea! You'd think you fellows had never been offshore! This isn't going
to last. These easterlies are always freakish things! But anyhow! What's
the use of getting scared? It's a sailor's place to die at sea! I always
said so: sooner a lobster than a mumbling parson and the worms! Pull
yourselves together, boys. And lash yourselves to something. The boat's
all right. Just don't get washed overboard!"
_Tio_ Batiste and the two sailors knotted the ends of their sashes
around the mast. Tonet tied the little boy securely to a ring astern;
but seeing that his brother, for a show of bravado, had sat down beside
the tiller free, he crouched at the railing, bracing himself against a
chock on the deck. A funereal silence settled on the _Mayflower_. The
sea was now in such commotion that the kelp on the bottom showed its
streamers in the troughs of the waves. The crests of foam were turning a
dirty yellow from the mud stirred up. Spray, rain, bits of seaweed,
lashed the faces and hands of the sailors cruelly. They were all now
soaked to the skin.
As the vessel rose to the crests, the keel half out of water aft, the
Rector could see other boats from the Cabanal in the distance, vanishing
in the mists of the horizon. They were all running with poles virtually
bare, scudding before the wind for shelter, though it would be much more
dangerous making port than to hold to the open sea. And the claws of
remorse sank deep into Pascualo's heart. He seemed to be awakening from
a horrible dream. That night of horror passed in the streets of the
village! Those four glasses of brandy at the tavern! That argument with
the men on shore, and his impulse to put to sea! Could he have been
guilty of all that? A more criminal wretch he was than the pair who had
betrayed him. If he had been tired of life, he could have tied a rock
around his neck and jumped off the Breakwater! But what right had he to
drive all those innocent boys to death? What would the people at home
say of him? It was his fault that half the fishermen had gone out in the
very teeth of the gale that morning! And then, his other boat! Every
soul aboard her lost, and because they had obeyed his orders like true
fishermen! And how many other vessels had met the same fate? There was
deep shame on his face as he looked at _tio_ Batiste and the two
sailors, lashed to the mast there and whipped and bleeding in the storm!
He did not choose to look at his brother nor at Pascualet. Little it
mattered if they should die--for at thought of them the thirst for
vengeance flamed in him anew. But the other two, sons of mothers, old
and dependent on them for support, and _tio_ Batiste, who had survived
so many dangers through all those years! Those surely he had no right to
kill! And the sight of the three men crouching there on the wet deck,
the ropes cutting into their flesh as they held on, half stunned under
the buffets that rained upon them like hammer blows, drove all sense of
his own danger from the Rector's mind. He scarcely noticed the waves
that came splashing up around him. Nothing seemed able to stir that huge
frame of his, but an anguish had reentered his soul sharper and more
racking than that of the night before. He must live, save himself, leave
his personal affairs for later settlement, but meanwhile get those men
ashore, get those men ashore, all of them, and not add to the burden
that the lost "cat" and the crew of his other boat had put upon his
conscience.
The Rector centered his whole mind on the handling of the _Mayflower_.
No need for worry just at present. That hull would stand any sea and
they did not have to buck the storm. But how get into the harbor? That
was the crucial effort in which so many came to grief. Ahead, just
visible through the rain, the spray and the mist, the Breakwater could
already be seen, its back looming above the water like a whale driven
aground by the gale. How double that projecting point?
From succeeding crests the skipper studied the rocks that were churning
in a hell of surf, and his heart sank within him at thought of the
struggle ahead. Not another sail was in sight. Many boats, perhaps, had
gotten in. The rest were already lost On top of the Breakwater, many,
many black points, people, probably, who had come, crazy with fear, to
watch the ghastly combat between man and the elements.
All the Cabanal had started down to the giant wall of red rocks as the
first crashes of the storm had broken; and the people, indifferent to
the breakers that might easily sweep them off, had gathered on the point
in front of the lighthouse, as though their presence there might be of
some help to their dear ones in the fight to enter the harbor. Under the
torrential downpour women kept coming on the run, the rain biting at
their faces, the gale washing their skirts about and whistling in their
ears. And they stood there on the rocks, their shawls soaked through,
praying, screaming, raising their hands to heaven. Men in oil skins and
sea boots came hurrying along the shore, jumping from stone to stone,
stopping many times, when they reached the Breakwater, to let a wave go
by as it leapt over that obstruction into the inner harbor, leaving the
red granite shining with the angry sweat of the tempest.
On the farthest projection of the jetty, where the storm surf was
dashing highest against the outer rocks, stood Dolores, bareheaded, her
face pale, clinging to _sina_ Tona, who was wild with anguish for her
boy, her Pascualet, who was still out there! And the two women, with
others also, cursed heaven with the foulest blasphemies, afterwards,
suddenly, to bow their heads, crossing their hands over their breasts,
and suppliantly promising masses, candles, offerings, to the Virgin of
Rosario and the Holy Christ of the Grao, addressing those miraculous
beings pleadingly, intimately, as though the divinities were present in
the flesh there before them. Dolores finally drew her shawl about her
and crouched for shelter behind the outermost rock, the wash from the
surf climbing up around her legs, but her eyes she held seaward with the
fixed motionless stare of a sphinx. On a stone farther back _tia_
Picores towered on high with her massive bony frame. Anger writhing at
her mouth, and her fists clenched in threat, she faced the sea with the
sublimity of a tragic witch, insulting the wild turmoil with the gibes
of the Fishmarket: "Pig of a sea! Streetwalker! Sow! They call you a
woman, but you're a man, I say!"
The rain came in horizontal sheets before the gale, which caught
individuals not clinging to their neighbors and tossed them around like
reeds. All the anxious watchers were wet to the skin and their clothes
clung dripping to their bodies; but absorbed in the enthralling horror
of the spectacle, they were unconscious of the chill that was beginning
to make their teeth chatter. A curse on the Rector's head! That cuckold
was to blame for everything! He was the one responsible for the fleet's
going out. It would serve him right if he never got in! And Dolores and
_sina_ Tona caught such angry words, and lowered their heads in shame
under public condemnation.
But one by one the boats rounded the Breakwater, cheered by the crowd,
and greeted by sobs and cries of joy from the families of the crews who
ran off toward the Grao to meet their men. Soon so many of them were in
that the throng of the Breakwater was noticeably smaller. The harbor
entrance had turned to a veritable hell of wind and wave and whirlpool.
Three boats were still in sight, and for an hour, while the people
ashore stood gripped in maddening suspense, they tacked and veered in
the hurricane, struggling against the dread currents that kept sweeping
them down the coast. At last they, too, got in, and a great sigh of
relief and satisfaction rose from the crowd.
But it was then that the black horizon was suddenly cleft by another
speck. A boat was driving shoreward in mad career though a mere shred of
canvas was visible at the foot of the bare pole The sailors who had
crept out to the most exposed rocks and were lying there on their
stomachs to offer least exposure to the wind and waves, looked at one
another despairingly. Too late, they all agreed. That straggler would be
the blood offering to the sea! Impossible to enter now!
Sharp eyes soon made out the identity of the craft. _Flor de Mayo!_
_Flor de Mayo!_ The boat came on, now swallowed in the deep trough, now
rearing on the crests of the combers. _Sina_ Tona and Dolores began to
shriek and scream like mad. They seemed bent on rushing out into the
water, and actually tried to reach one of the sea-swept boulders that
stood out in the surf like heads of giants peering above the turmoil.
And the sympathy and sorrow that misfortune brings to multitudes now
turned to the two women. Curses at the Rector ceased. Sailors gathered
round them with assurances that everything would be all right, though
some of the men, foreseeing the inevitable end of the ghastly battle,
tried to prevent them from looking on. And so an hour passed. A sight
to turn your hair white!
Pascualo, out at sea, felt the need of encouragement in his anxiety. And
he called to _tio_ Batiste.
"You know the Gulf, _tio_," he shouted. "What do you think of the looks
of things?"
But the old man, awakening with a start from his chill and torpor, shook
his head sadly, and on the face above his white goatee the resignation
of glorious, fearless manhood was written. No, in an hour it would be
all over! No crossing the tide-rip in a sea like that. You could take
his word for that! In all his life he had never seen such a wind! But
the Rector felt the strength for anything within him. "Well, if we can't
get in, we'll hold offshore, by God! and ride her out!" "No, you can't
do that. There's going to be two days of it, at least. The boat might
stand the seas, but you can't beat against this blow. If you try to
coast along, you'll strike at Cullera, and if you get by there, you'll
fetch up on the Cape. No, the one chance is running in. If it's dying,
let's die near home, where so many of the boys have died, and in sight
of the Christ of the Grao!" And _tio_ Batiste, hitching around in the
leashes that held him to the mast, got one hand into his shirt front,
drew out a tarnished crucifix of bronze, and kissed it devoutly over and
over again.
The old man's voice seemed to put spirit into the other men. "_Cristo!_
a pretty time for parson stuff!" Tonet jeered with a sepulchral laugh,
and the two sailors began to curse at the old man with blasphemous
obscenities. Danger, instead of crushing them, seemed to translate
despair into raving impiety. The skipper shrugged his shoulders
indifferently. A good Christian he was! If you didn't believe it, ask
don Santiago. But he knew one thing, that the only Christ who would
bring the _Mayflower_ through that fix was _Pascualo el Retor_, and he
might even do the trick if the damned boat minded her helm!
The proximity of shoal water was now quite apparent on the vessel. The
combers had stopped coming in huge but fairly regular mountains from
astern. A cross sea was running now, throwing a violent nasty chop back
against the wind, and the water, piled up along the shore, was tumbling
seaward in a gigantic undertow that broke to the surface in boiling
seething whirlpools. The _Mayflower_, every timber in her sound and
solid, creaked and strained in the new turmoil of conflicting forces.
She was virtually unmanageable between the impact of the gale from
astern and the water catching at her keel from forward and abeam. But
though great waves were breaking over her from all directions, her
hatches were firmly battened down, and nobly she struggled free each
time. The Rector understood, however, that, caught now in the tide-run
off the Breakwater, there was no alternative but to try for the harbor.
The people on the rocks were now in plain sight. Spray could be seen
dashing over them, and occasionally their anguished voices even reached
as far as the _Mayflower's_ deck. _Recristo!_ To be drowned like rats in
a trap, under the very eyes of your folks, and they unable to help you!
Dog of a sea! Pig of a wind! And the Rector, to vent his impotent fury,
spat at the waves, as the vessel reared and plunged this way and that,
the scuppers under, clear to the hatch, first to starboard and then to
port, the cross-yard shoving its point under at every roll.
"Look out! Look out!"
Now the death blows were beginning to come.
A wave of gray water, noiseless, and without a cap, reared above the
stern, came full aboard without breaking, covered the whole boat,
sweeping over her like a cuff from a gigantic hand. The Rector received
the shock square on the back, but nothing, apparently, could loosen his
iron grip from the tiller, nor pry his feet from the deck against which
they were braced. He felt the water get deeper and deeper above his
head, and a terrible groaning as if the boat were going to pieces under
the strain. Then, as he came to the surface, an object, driven along by
the wave like a cannonball, just grazed him.
It was the water-cask. The great roller had torn it from its frame, and
was hurling it along the deck, crushing everything before it. It brushed
Pascualet in the face, and blood spurted from the boy's nostrils. Then,
like a giant sledge-hammer, it hurtled forward toward the foot of the
mast where _tio_ Batiste and the two sailors were. It was all as
instantaneous as it was terrible. There was a cry. In spite of his
courage in the face of terror, Pascualo could not stand this horrifying
sight. With a groan of agony he buried his face in his hands. Like a
mighty catapult, the barrel caught the youngest of the sailors on the
head, and crushed him to pulp against the mast; and then, like an
assassin running away with blood streaming from his hands, the heavy keg
rolled into the scupper and overboard. Eddies of water coming along the
deck, swept the mangled headless torso against the hands and faces of
the other men, and washed blood and bits of flesh around over the
planking.
_Tio_ Batiste, his faltering lament sounding faintly through the storm,
began to protest despairingly. God, could it not soon be over! Why
torment honest sailors so? They had done no harm! "Let her go, Pascualo,
let her go, for God's sake! Our time has come! Why fight and make us
suffer so long?" But the Rector was not listening. His eyes were on the
mast, where he remembered hearing that terrible groaning sound, when he
was under water. And, in fact, the pole had been fractured and was
leaning alarmingly. At the peak he could still see the sheaf of grass
that had been hung up there for the christening and the bunch of dry
flowers that the hurricane was whipping about at the end of one last
strand. "_Pare!_ _Pare!_" Pascualet, his face covered with blood and
terrified at the catastrophe he felt impending, was calling to his
father to save him! But his father could do nothing. Keep her away from
the worst one, perhaps, and prevent her from rolling over! As for
doubling the Breakwater, he had given up hope of that!
And then ... even the Rector gave a cry of terror.
The _Mayflower_ was at the bottom of a great gully in the sea. From
behind a huge roller of black shining water was curling; and a back-wave
just as high was rushing the other way. The boat would be caught between
them as they met.
It seemed minutes before it was over, though the crash was
instantaneous. With a horrible crunching and wrenching of timber, the
_Mayflower_ went down into a great boiling cauldron; and when she came
to the surface again, her deck was as level and clean as a scow's. The
mast was off even with the flooring and had gone overboard, carrying
sail, men and all. The Rector thought he saw the blanched face of _tio_
Batiste looking up at him out of the water for a second. Then that had
gone. It was about over now!
As the _Mayflower_ came up dismantled and helpless from her terrific
ordeal, the throng on the Breakwater gave one great groan of agony.
"They're lost! They're lost!" The cry was audible even to the men on
board!
With her sail all gone, the boat no longer answered her helm. But
Pascualo by frantic pulling to and fro succeeded in keeping her from
drifting sideways before the wind. A chance wave swept the _Mayflower_
over the rocks off the Breakwater. She did not touch, however, but
drifted by so close that the Rector could recognize faces in the throng.
What anguish! Able to reach them almost with your hand, able to hear
them speak, and yet to be doomed! In a second the jetty was far astern.
They would strike on the bars off Nazaret, and perish in the sands there
that had been the graveyard of so many boats!
Tonet, who had been quite dazed by the repeated buffets from the water
taken aboard, seemed to come to himself suddenly as the boat approached
the Breakwater. It was a vision of life that gleamed in the darkness of
his despair. No! He did not want to die! He would fight and fight to the
last gasp. In the alternative of certain drowning in the undertow off
Nazaret or of taking a chance among the rocks on the Breakwater, he
would take the chance. Hadn't he been famous as the best swimmer in the
Cabanal?
On hands and knees, and at the risk of going overboard with the next
wave, he crawled along from the rail to a hatch that had been torn off
by a recent comber. He went down into the hold.
The Rector watched him contemptuously. No, he was not sorry he had gone
out after all! It had been God's way of saving a good man from
committing murder! In a few minutes he would perish with that traitor of
a brother. As for Dolores, she might live! That would be the worst
punishment for her! Was there a bigger fraud in the world than life?
No--he knew what a cheat life was! Death, death was the only honest
thing, the thing that keeps all its promises and never lies! Death and
the treachery of the sea--two truths, the only two truths! For the sea
lets a man rob her! She leads him on and on, till he loves her! And
then, some fine day, crash! and it's over. And so on, from father to
son, generation after generation!
Such thoughts passed in instantaneous, successive flashes through the
Rector's mind, as though the imminence of death were whetting his dull
intelligence.
But, as Tonet's head came up through the hatch again, Pascualo jumped to
his feet on the rolling deck, and uttered an exclamation of surprise.
His brother had something in his hands. The life-preserver--the gift of
_sina_ Tona to the _Mayflower_--which the Rector had laid away below and
thereafter quite forgotten!
Tonet did not quaver at the stare of execration his brother gave him.
"What are you going to do with that?" the Rector shouted.
"Going overboard! Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost!
Think I'm going to drown here like a rat in a trap? No, sir, I'm going
to take a chance!"
"The devil you are! You die with me, right here, and even then I don't
know that we'll be square!"
In that supreme crisis, Tonet became again the harbor rowdy of his early
boyhood, the ragamuffin stranger to respect and consideration for other
people. He smiled ferociously, cynically, back at his brother.
Pale with hatred, the two men faced each other.
"_Pare!_ _Pare!_" Pascualet again called faintly, tugging weakly at the
lash that held him to the deck.
The Rector remembered that the child was there. Lowering, silent, grim,
he let go the tiller, drew his knife from his belt, and cut the sash
about the little fellow's waist.
"And now" ... he said, "that life-belt!"
But Tonet made an obscene gesture, and started to put the jacket on.
"You dog!" Pascualo cried. "I must speak, at last, tell you what I think
of you, in just two words! You thought you had fooled me! But it was you
I chased last night through the streets of the village. You had been
with that foul woman ashore there! I am not going to kill you, because
we're going to die together. But this boy here--I used to call him my
Pascualet--is not to blame. And I'm not going to let him die. He may get
drowned, and that would be almost better for him! But he must have what
chance there is! That life-belt, Tonet! For your own boy, the child of
your treachery and disgrace! You're a dog, but you are also a father!
Hand it over, or I'll cut your throat!"
Tonet smiled an atrocious, cynical smile.
"I don't say he's not mine. But it's everybody for himself!"
He had the life-belt almost on, but he was not quick enough to finish.
His brother was upon him. There was a quick desperate struggle on that
pitching, rolling, wave-washed deck.
Tonet fell on his back. Pascualo had sunk the knife twice into his side.
The Rector's thirst for vengeance had been assuaged!
Blind, not knowing what he was about, he adjusted the life-belt to the
boy's tiny form, picked him up like a bundle of laths, walked astern,
and threw him overboard. He saw him floating there for a second, till
the crest of a great wave caught him.
It had all been the matter of minutes. The crowd on the point of the
Breakwater saw the _Mayflower_ drifting off entirely at the mercy of the
storm. The rain suddenly had ceased, and the lightning-flashes were more
distant now, though the gale still held furious, and the waves were
coming even higher than before. The sailors could not tell, quite, what
was going on on deck; but they saw the Rector throw a large bundle into
the breakers, that lifted it up, and began to toss it shoreward, toward
the rocks.
There was one last cry of horror.
The _Mayflower_ had been caught abeam by a huge breaker, and was being
turned end over end. She was seen for a second, bottom up, and then she
sank, out of sight.
The women crossed themselves. Strong hands laid hold on _sina_ Tona and
Dolores, to keep them from leaping into the sea.
Everybody had guessed what that bundle was, floating out there toward
the shore. "The boy! The boy!" The sailors could see him now in the
life-belt. But he would be smashed against the stones. The two women
were screaming for help, though not knowing how it should come nor from
whom. Could not the child at least be saved! "The boy! The boy!"
A young man volunteered. To his sash he tied a line held in the hands of
the men on shore. He jumped down to the low-lying rocks, and then
farther out still, into the water. And he held himself there, against
the boiling wash, by sheer strength and adroitness.
The little body came shoreward. It was thrown up against a sharp crag
and then, to the dismay of the throng, torn loose by another wave.
At last the sailor got hold of it, as a breaker was about to dash it
headlong against the wall.
Poor Pascualet! He was laid out on the muddy top of the Breakwater, his
face covered with blood, his arms and legs cold and blue, the flesh cut
and torn by the sharp edges of the rocks, his tiny form projecting from
the big life-belt like a turtle from its shell. _Sina_ Tona tried to
warm in her hands the little head whose eyes were closed forever.
Dolores was kneeling at his side, digging her nails into her face,
pulling frantically at her luxuriant beautiful hair, her eyes, of the
glints of gold, rolling vacantly, wildly, in all directions, while
piercing screams went out into space.
"_Fill meu!_ _Fill meu!_"
To one side, in the crowd of weeping women, Rosario stood, the deserted,
the childless wife, tearful in the presence of that anguished
motherhood; and from the bottom of her soul she forgave her rival.
And on a rock, there, above them all, indomitable in the face of sorrow,
proud and erect as Vengeance herself, towered the massive bony frame of
_tia_ Picores, her skirts lashing like pennons in the hurricane.
Her back was turned contemptuously toward the sea and the clenched fist
she raised was menacing some one way off on shore there, where the
_Miguelete_ raised its sturdy mass above the housetops of Valencia.
That was the real killer of poor folks, there the real author of the
catastrophe! And the sea-witch shook her rough deformed knuckles at the
city, while streams of obscenities flowed from her cavernous mouth.
"And after this they'll come to the Fishmarket, the harlots, and beat
you down, and beat you down! And still they'll say fish comes high, the
scullions! And cheap 't would be at fifty, yes, at seventy-five a
pound!..."
THE END
* * * * *
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
MARE NOSTRUM (OUR SEA)
BLOOD AND SAND
LA BODEGA (THE FRUIT OF THE VINE)
THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL
WOMAN TRIUMPHANT
THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN
MEXICO IN REVOLUTION
_In Preparation_
THE ARGONAUTS
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
End of Project Gutenberg's Mayflower (Flor de mayo), by Vicente Blasco Ibanez