"Recristo!"

The Rector raised his eyes to heaven, as he muttered the oath, in protest, it seemed, against the powers above who allow such things to happen to an honest man. But he was a stubborn fellow at bottom. His trustful, inoffensive, disposition made it hard for him to believe things like that were possible. Inwardly convinced, he nevertheless came back with a menacing rejoinder:

"You are lying, Rosario! You know that you are lying!"

But the challenge put Rosario on her mettle! "So I'm lying! Oh say, Pascualo, what's the use of talking with a man like you. You're so blind you can't see the nose on your face. What are you yelling about? What have I done to you? You're as blind as a bat, yes, sir, blind as a bat. A man with a spoonful of brains inside his skull would have seen through the situation from the first. But you ... you don't notice anything. You never noticed whether your boy looks like you or like him!"

And that was a nasty thrust! Though the Rector's face was as brown as shoe-leather from years in the sun and the salt-air, it turned a bluish ashen pale. His knees seemed to sag as if he were going to fall, and the shock made his words come out faint, husky and stammering.

"My boy! My Pascualet! Well, whom does he look like? Spit it out, damn you! Pascualet ... is my boy, my boy. And he looks like me ... like me ... he does!"

But the laugh with which Rosario answered was the hollow, sarcastic, mocking laugh of a she-devil! Pascualo did not quite understand. What was there to laugh about in his saying that his boy was his boy? In terror he waited for her explanation. "Why, stupid! If Pascualet is your boy, he ought to look like you, oughtn't he, just as you look the way your father, old Pascualo, looked. Well, he doesn't, that's all! He looks like Tonet—eyes shape, build, and complexion! Poor dunce of a Rector! They call you lanudo! But the wool on your eyes is thicker than they ever guessed! Heavens, man, take a peep at the boy! He's the living picture of Tonet, as Tonet used to be in the days when he was a boy with you, down at the tavern, and was running around like a little devil on the beach!"

The Rector did not need convincing further. He was ready to believe that now. A cataract had been removed from before his eyes, and he saw things clearly, though the world had a strange unfamiliar aspect for him, as it does to a blind man led forth for a first glimpse of it. Gospel truth! Pascualet was Tonet over again! How many times, on looking at the boy, he had had, on his own account, a feeling that he was really looking at some one else—though just whom, he could not quite say!

Pascualo pressed a pair of clenched fists to his chest as though his heart were burning inside him and he were trying to tear it out; then he brought them down with a noisy thud upon his temples. "Recontracordons! God of God of God of Gods!" he groaned in a voice of agony that terrified Rosario. "Holy Christ of the Grao!" He staggered a few steps across the room, like a drunken man, and threw himself flat on the floor with a crash that shook the rickety building. He rolled over, and his legs seemed to bound from the violence of the fall.

When the Rector came to his senses again, he found himself lying on his back, and something warm and tickling was running over his cheeks, like a soft wriggling snake. He wiped his face where it hurt, with his hand, and the hand came back, as he saw in the murky candle light, all covered with blood. His nose felt hot and swollen. He understood what had happened. In going to the floor he had struck hard on his face. His nose had been bleeding in streams. Rosario was just kneeling beside him to wash the blood away with a damp cloth. The girl's look of terror brought him back to all he had been hearing, and he repelled her with a gesture of hatred.

"Don't touch me! I can get up by myself. And much obliged for all you have told me! No, no! Don't bother to excuse yourself! I'm delighted! Favors like that are never forgotten. And lucky I bumped my nose. Otherwise I might have burst a blood vessel. God, how my head aches! But never mind! Cheer up! What a time I'm going to have! I've been too good-natured in my life, I have! But why should a fellow try to do right and put his whole life into working for his family? There's plenty of loafers, and gossips, and rotten women, standing around to bring an honest man to ruin. But now watch me, and you'll see something worth while. This town is going to have something to remember the Rector by, Pascualo el Retor, the most famous lanudo of the Gulf! Ho! Ha!"

Meanwhile, as he muttered on, cursing, bellowing, puffing, threatening, he had been wiping his face with the wet cloth, as though the cool touch of it relieved the biting agony within him. Now he strode toward the door, thrusting his big hands into his sash, in a demeanor of determined resolution. Rosario rushed in front of him, an expression of horror written on her face. A flash of her mad passion for Tonet had come back to her. She was afraid he was to be killed. "Wait, Pascualo! Wait! It may be all a lie! I may have been deceived! You know how people talk! And Tonet is your brother!"

But the Rector smiled in a cold sinister way. "I've heard enough from you. And you're right. I know you're right! And when I'm sure, I'm sure. And you're scared because you know I'm right, too. And you're afraid for your Tonet, aren't you! You love him, don't you! Well, yes, and I love Dolores, in spite of everything! Remember, whatever I do, that that girl has got me here, here, and I shall never get the stab of it out of my heart. But you're going to see, Rosario, and this whole town is going to see, how Pascualo el llanut goes about things like this!"

"No, Pascualo, no," begged Rosario, seizing him by his powerful hands. "Wait ... not to-night ... to-morrow ... some other day!"

"Oh, I know what you are thinking about! You know where Tonet is to-night! But don't worry. You're right! Not to-night! Not to-night! Besides, I've left my knife at home. And I'm not going to kill them with my teeth! But for God's sake, get out of my way, woman. A fellow can't breathe in here!" And he brushed Rosario aside with a rude thrust, and dashed out into the dark.

The Rector's first sensation on finding himself alone was one of relief and pleasure, as though he had just escaped from a furnace. And he breathed deeply and deliciously of the cold breeze that was growing noticeably stronger. Not a star was shining now. The sky was overcast, and Pascualo, in spite of his situation, with the instinct of a sailor, first took account of the weather. "Bad day to-morrow!" he commented. Then the sea and the storm passed from his mind. He began to walk, and he walked and walked, moving his legs mechanically, indifferent to direction, hardly knowing that he was walking, though each footstep seemed to ring in his brain with a grating irritating echo. He was as unconscious, almost, as he had been back there in Tenet's cabin after his fall. He was asleep, but standing up, and his feet going, in a dream, but going rapidly, in spite of the paralysis of all his senses. He did not notice that he was walking round and round over the same streets.

Then a feeling came back to him, and again it was one of pleasure. How nice it was to be walking around in the dark over roads that would seem too ugly to be worth while by daylight! It was the fugitive's joy in the desert, where he is free from human beings and under the protecting wing of solitude. There, in the distance, was a glimmer of light. A drinking place, probably! And he turned, all a-tremble, in the opposite direction, as though a danger lay that way. Oh, if some one should see him! He would die of shame. The most insignificant "cat" would be too much for him! No, silence, darkness, to be alone, was all he wanted!

So he walked the streets of the village and then down on the beach, which also seemed to terrify him. "God, how those fishermen must have been making fun of me!" Probably all the boats there were in the secret and when they creaked it was their way of laughing at the wool they saw on the eyes of the Mayflower's captain! Occasionally he would awaken from the torpor in which he was wandering doggedly from place to place. One time he came to himself just long enough to see that he was boarding his boat. At another, he found himself on his own door-step with his hand about to raise the latch. No, somewhere else, somewhere else. A moment's quiet and calm! There would be time for that, later! In the end, shocks like these gradually roused him from his anguished abstraction.

No, he would never put up with it! Never! People were going to find out what sort of a man the Rector was! But after all, it wasn't necessary to be too hard on Dolores. She was running true to form—a real daughter of tio Paella, drunkard that he had been, patron and agent of the girls in the Fishmarket section, talking around his house as though Dolores were some member of his "flock"! What could she ever have learned from a man like that! To be a bad girl, that's all, and no decency whatever. And that was how, just how, she had turned out! But you couldn't blame her, could you? The real one to blame was he himself, great fool that he had been, ever to think of marrying a woman who had to be just what Dolores was!

Hadn't sina Tona always said so? Mother saw through her from the start, and had never wanted a girl of tio Paella's in the family. A bad woman, Dolores, granted! But he couldn't talk very loud if he had married her with his eyes open. But Tonet! What could you find to say for him! Disgracing your own brother! Who ever heard of monstrousness like that! Your own brother! No, you cut the heart out of a beast of that kind!

But scarcely had his blood-thirsty schemes of vengeance taken shape in his mind, that old habits of thinking had their say. There was Rosario reminding him that Tonet was his brother! Wasn't it just as monstrous for a brother to kill a brother as to betray him? One such case in the history of the world—Cain, and what sort of a chap had Cain been? Not much, to judge by what don Santiago said of him! And then again, was Tonet really to blame? "No, Pascualo! You're to blame yourself, and nobody else. I see it all clear as day. You robbed Tonet of his sweetheart. That boy and Dolores were lovers before you even thought of speaking to a girl of tio Paella's! Now that was a mean trick, come to think of it! Marry your brother's promised bride! As rotten a thing as ever I did! And so, what else could you expect? There they are together all the time—as had to be, brother-in-law, sister-in-law—and both in the family. Well, could you expect them not to fall in love again?"

He stopped in his tracks for a moment, so obvious, so crushing, did the sense of his own guilt come back to him. He looked around. It was the beach, there, under his feet; and a few steps away was the tavern of his mother. The blackening rotting boat, rising from the reed enclosures around it, called up a flood of memories from the past. There they had played together, he and Tonet, running about over the sands. Tonet was on his shoulder, pulling at his hair in angry petulant disgust at not having his own way. Just inside those walls, the old stateroom, and the warm quilt thrown over the two of them! How tenderly he had cared for his little brother, his comrade in poverty, who had rested his little brown head sometimes on his very cheek! Yes, Rosario had been right. His brother! More than that, his child! For it was he, really, more than sina Tona, who had been a loving parent to the boy, spoiling him, slaving for him! "And now, I'm going to kill him! God, what beast would commit a crime like that?" No, he would forgive Tonet. Why be a Christian otherwise? Why, otherwise, believe in all the things don Santiago talked about?

The absolute solitude of the seashore, the darkness as black as the night before Creation, the complete aloofness from every human being, brought a touch of sweetness back into that travailing spirit, with the impulse toward forgiveness. Pascualo was recovering to a new life. It seemed as though another being were inside him, and thinking for him. Anguish had put an edge on his intelligence. God was his only companion in that loneliness. With God he would have to reckon. And did God care if a man found his wife unfaithful? What a small detail that must seem to a Being as great as that! Just like a pair of rats down there on earth! No, much more important it must seem to God for a fellow to be good, and not answer treason with murder ... murder!

Slowly the Rector turned back toward the Cabanal. How much better he felt, now! The cold breeze, rapidly growing stronger, had found a way into the furnace within him. But how weak and faint he felt! He had not eaten a mouthful since breakfast the day before. And his nose must have been broken by the fall, it pained him so! One! Two! A church bell rang in the distance. Two o'clock! What a night! And how it had flown! But the hours still to pass before morning would probably seem much longer!

As the Rector reached the road, he heard a boy's voice begin to sing. Some "cat" on the way to his boat. In fact, there the youngster was, on the other sidewalk, with two oars on his shoulder and a roll of nets under his arm.

The sight of the boy upset him again. Now the Rector understood that there were two Rectors under that one hide of his. One of them was the usual man he had always been—good-natured, taciturn, with kindly feelings for everybody. The other, a beast that began to roar and claw inside him at the thought of being deceived, and which snarled for blood in the presence of betrayal. And Pascualo laughed a shrill high-strung laugh! Pardon! Forgiveness! What a cowardly whimperer that other Rector was! See how the imbecile had sniffled at a lot of humbug memories back there near the tavern of sina Tona! Lanudo! Just the name for a coward like that! Fine sentiments those had been to justify a man without the guts to protect his own dignity as a man! Such stuff might do very well for don Santiago! It was a curate's job to find pretty words and say them. But he was a sailor, thank God, with the life of a young bull in him; and if anybody tried funny business on him, by God, he would get what was coming to him, with some to boot. Lanudo! Coward!

And ashamed in his own eyes for his past weakness, the skipper began to thump his fists on his chest, swearing at himself in his other ridiculous personality, where he was so good-natured and easy-going. Forgiveness! Forgiveness might be all right in a graveyard. But he was living in a village where people were alive and knew each other. In a few hours they would be up and out on the streets, walking past him as that "cat" had just walked past, but nudging each other at sight of him and whispering: "There goes Pascualo el llanut!" Never! Ch—st, he would die first! His mother hadn't brought him into the world to be the butt of the whole Cabanal. First, Tonet! And then Dolores! And then every damned man who got in his way. And then—well, then,—what were jails for, anyway, but for men worth the salt they eat! And if it was worse than jail ... ready for that, too. He might die at sea sometime, anyhow. Well, suppose they did squeeze his gullet up there on a scaffold! He would be dying like a sailor with good boards under his feet. And they would know they were garroting a man, and not a weakling!

He broke into a run, his elbows drawn in, and his head lowered, roaring as though he were running to grapple with a mortal enemy. In the dark he collided with posts and trees. But he did not care. A mad instinct to kill, to destroy, was carrying him wildly toward his dwelling.

He tore at the latch violently, but the door was locked. He began to pound and kick and throw himself against it, till the hinges and fastenings creaked under the blows. He opened his mouth to shout, insult the wretches inside, call to them to come out and be killed, spit upon their heads the terrible threats that were boiling in his feverish brain. But he could say nothing. His tongue seemed to be paralyzed in his throat. His whole strength had gone to his hands, that were pulling at the latch, and into his feet, that were eating into the wood of the door with the hobnails on his boots.

And all that was not enough. He would have done anything to fill those guilty rats with terror! And he stooped down, picked up a big stone, and hurled it with all his might into the door, which boomed in agony and made the whole house tremble.

Then silence! The Rector thought he heard several windows in the neighborhood opening cautiously at the uproar. He wanted vengeance, but he didn't have to make the whole town laugh in the meantime! A sense of the absurdity of the situation came over him—the thought of himself storming out there in the street while the lovers were inside quite comfortable. What a clown he would be if he were seen! He ran off around the corner of the house and crouched there in hiding. There was talking for a time and some laughter. Then the windows were closed again, and the street relapsed into complete silence.

The Rector had good eyes, trained to seeing far into the darkest nights. From his corner, the door of the house was quite visible. There he would stay till the sun came up, if need be. He would wait for his brother! His brother? No, for that dog of a Tonet! When the wretch came out ... what a pity his knife wasn't handy! But he could kill him somehow, either strangle him, or perhaps pound his head in with a stone. Afterwards, he would go in and fix the woman, rip her open with the butcher-knife, or something of the sort. There was time to think of that. Something better, even, might occur to him while he was waiting.

Crouching at his corner there, the Rector began to think of all the tortures he had ever heard of, gloating over each new marvel of cruelty as he applied it, in foretaste, to the guilty pair, finally coming down to burning them alive on the open beach over a slow fire made of timber from the old boats. But how cold it was getting to be! And how sick he was feeling! The mad rage that had come over him at sight of the "cat" was passing, leaving him in a condition of general weakness and lassitude. He could barely lift his hand. The dampness of the night was getting into his bones, and his empty stomach gave him waves of nausea. Suffering did take hold of a fellow! How sick! How sick! Another reason for killing that pair of good-for-nothings! In the end they would finish him with worry and pain! He had grown old over night. It had all happened since sundown. And there he was, a strong man, unable to lift a finger!

One! Two! Three! Three o'clock! How time dragged on. But he did not move from his ambush, though he felt his limbs stiffening and his brain begin to fag. The thoughts of dire punishments had passed from his mind. That, indeed, had become a blank. What was he doing there? He couldn't quite remember at times—all his energies were so centered in his eyes, which not for a second even left that door of his house.

Half-past three had long since tolled when the Rector thought he heard the slight grating of a latch, and saw his door swing open. A form appeared on the threshold and stayed there for a second or two, as though the person were studying the street in both directions to see if any one were watching. There was another squeak, and a slight thud as the door closed. The Rector stood painfully up, his joints quite numb from the cold. At last his time had come! And he dashed forward on the run.

But the figure in front of the door was supported on a pair of wonderful legs. When it saw another man approaching, it gave one bound and went tearing off down the street. Early risers in the houses along the road heard the clatter of racing footsteps on the brick sidewalks as the pursuit swept by, a panting heart-breaking chase in the dark. The Rector could see a white spot in front of him, the pack of clothing the fugitive was carrying over his shoulder; but despite his best efforts, he realized that clew would soon be lacking; for the distance between him and his intended victim opened wider at every yard. Those bandy legs of his were just the thing to walk a deck in bad weather, but on the racetrack!... Besides, that wait there hadn't done him any good, and Tonet had been famous as a runner when he was a little boy. At a crossroad, in fact, the white pack had vanished into void. Pascualo went hunting through the streets on either side, but he could not find even a footprint.

People were beginning to be up and about in the Cabanal, men, for the most part, who had work to do on the shore. And the Rector himself now fled, in terror at the thought that some one might see him. There was nothing left to be done now. He had lost all hope of vengeance. And shivering with cold, too weak to think even, resigned to whatever fate should have in store for him, he made his way toward the beach. Things were already stirring about the boats there. The dark sands were flecked all along with lanterns as the sailors went about their work. And here was another light—from the door of the tavern-boat. Roseta had just taken down the wooden shutter over the counter and she could be seen through the opening, wrapped in a shawl, her halo of blonde curly hair shooting rebellious strands out from under the kerchief over her head. She was still but half awake, and her face was pinched and blue from the cold. She was on the lookout for early customers, and a bottle of brandy with glasses was out on the board. Sina Tona was still asleep in her stateroom. Knowing hardly what he was about, Pascualo turned in that direction, and did not stop till his elbow was on the counter.

"Give us a glass!" But Roseta, instead of obeying him, stood there looking at him with bright though expressionless eyes that seemed to penetrate to the innermost of his spirit. The Rector winced. That girl! That girl! What a keen one! She had caught everything at a glance! And the skipper, to get out of his hole, fell back on violence. "Good God! Have you got ears on your head? Give me a glass, I said." And a glass, for that matter, he really needed, to dispel the mortal lethargy that had settled on his whole body. A sober man he was! But he would drink, and drink and drink till he was drunk, and drown his torpor in alcohol!

And he downed a glass. And then another, and still a third, one gulp to each. His sister passed the drinks across the counter, but her eyes were still fixed upon him, as though she could read everything that had happened written out on his features in black and white. But he was feeling better, so much better! Nothing like aguardiente, to brace a fellow up! The damp chill of morning seemed to be burning off, all of a sudden, and a pleasant tingling began to run up and down just under his skin. The humor of the situation caught him now. How funny he must have looked beating it down the street as though the devil were after him, puffing like a porpoise! And then the world took on a rosy hue. He must be a good fellow, love everybody, and beginning with that girl there, his sister, who, for her part, had not taken her eyes off him once.

"Yes, why not tell the truth! You're the real credit to our family, Roseta girl! The rest of us? Hogs, hogs, beginning with me! Me! No, Roseta, you're all there—something nice, delicate-like, about you. You see through things, with the cleverest of them. But you say things—oh, I don't know—you say things, diplomatic-like, so's they don't come down on a fellow like a thousand of brick! Oh, I remember, I do! On the way home through the Grao, that day! Other people, they just rub it in, till you're ready to damn your soul. But it's what you've got up here, up here! Brains you've got, brains! You were right all these years. Scamps and puddingheads, puddingheads and scamps! And you're going at it right, I say. You keep the men away. You don't slobber all over them, and then lie to them, and make donkeys of them, and ruin them. No, you're a real girl, Roseta, better than the best of them."

With that liquid fire on his empty stomach, the Rector grew more and more emphatic as he talked on. His arms began to gesticulate, and his voice rose and rose, till his words were audible yards away.

"Is that you, Pascualo?" The call came from behind the curtains in Sina Tona's stateroom, hoarse and halting, but affectionate withal.

"Yes, ma, it's me. Just going down to the boat to see what's going on. I wouldn't get up, just yet, if I were you. Going to be bad weather!"

In fact, daylight was now breaking, and along the horizon where the water darkened to a strip of black, another band, of faint livid light, was stretching. The sky was still overcast, and a thick fog was coming up the shore, softening the edges on trees and boats and houses, dimly visible in the brightening twilight.

"Well, one more glass, and that will do." And the Rector passed a calloused hand over his sister's cold cheek. "Good-by, girl! But remember what I say, you're the only decent woman in the Cabanal. It's your brother talking, Roseta. The only decent woman in the Cabanal, yes! And if a man asks you to marry him, say 'no,' say 'no.'"

Pascualo was whistling unconcernedly as he sauntered up to the Mayflower. You would have thought him the happiest man on earth, but for the yellowish glitter in his eyes, that seemed to be bulging from their sockets in his red face flushed with alcohol. In a conspicuous position on deck, and standing up full height to advertise the fact that he was there, Tonet was in full view—at his feet the white pack that had just been having such a dance of it through the dark streets of the Cabanal.

"Hello, Pascualo!" he called, the moment he spied his brother, at much pains apparently to start a conversation and dispel any suspicion the Rector might have. And could you beat that for impudence, the sneaking weasel! But before the Rector, who felt all the wild rage of a few hours previous boiling up anew, could answer, a crowd of sailors and skippers came running up. "What do you think of it, Pascualo?" they were calling. "Going to blow, do you think?" And they gathered around him, but without taking their eyes off the horizon. There was a scowl in that sky! Crazy to think of going out! And just their luck! Of course, it had to come then, when the fish were as thick as fleas outside, and you could pick them up with your hands! But after all, a man's hide is of more account than a dollar! They all agreed. Dirty weather ahead! Nothing to do but stick to cover.

But not so Pascualo. "Stick to cover, eh! Well, you fellows can stay ashore if you want to, and twirl your fingers. I'm going out, and right now. I never saw a blow yet that would keep me home, when I'd made up my mind to go. The woman folks ought to stay at home. But I like to see men and not cowards in the fish business." He spoke in a tone of voice that did not seem to invite argument, and as though the suggestion of his staying in had veiled an insult. He turned his back on the skippers around, to get away from them, get away from everybody, who might know, and ... laugh! "Into the water with her, boys!" And the oxen came out of the barn and down toward the shore. "Hey, Flor de Mayo there! Overboard, all hands, and get the skids down!"

The men in the crew obeyed their orders as they were trained to do, unquestioningly. Only tio Batiste raised a voice of protest, and he spoke with his full authority as a bull-dog of the sea.

"God, man, where are your eyes this morning! Don't you see the wind off there! Blowing like hell, man alive!"

"Oh, that ain't wind, that's rain, agueelo! No, no, it's going to settle down to raining. An hour or two of chop, perhaps, but not enough to make a chicken sea-sick!"

"Well, it's rain or it's wind. But if it's wind, the way it looks from here, it's all day with the man that gets into it!"

"Oh, go along home, tio," the Rector snapped with a rudeness he had never used toward that old salt before. "There's a job up at the church for you, janitor or something. This boat is no place for cowards nor for invalids!"

"Coward, is it? Coward, eh? I've been to Havana twice in a fifty-footer, belly of a sick whale! And on the rocks twice, in weather that would make you blue in the gills! By God, take twenty years off this back of mine, and I'd rip you up the front for saying that, the way I would a codfish! But into the water she goes, boys! When the captain speaks, it ain't for the likes of me to raise a voice. Into the water with her, boys, and to hell with her!" And the furious old sailor was through grumbling in time to help lay the last skid before the Mayflower's bow touched the surf. Another pair of oxen was already pulling at the boat that was to go team with the Rector's newer craft; and in a few moments both vessels had raised their huge lateen sails, and were dashing fast through the outer breakers with every stitch of canvas drawing.

The skippers ashore stood looking on perplexedly. The Rector's outfit was now well out to sea, and jealousy began to rage within them. That lanudo had gone mad! The idea of putting to sea in the teeth of a threat like that! But he had his eye on the market! Making a clean-up, eh? While they were standing around with their hands in their pockets! It angered them, this selfish impudence, as though the Rector were out to catch all the fish left in the sea. The boldest and most jealous took the lead. "Well, sir, where he can go, I can go! Does he think he's the only man that can sail a boat around here? Haul her out, Chepa, haul her out, and be quick about it!"

The challenge was taken up all along the shore. "Boyero! Boyero!" Everybody began calling for the oxen at once, and the drivers did not know which way to turn. The madness of the Rector seemed to spread like wildfire from one end of the beach to the other. The women ashore began to shriek and protest at seeing their men go out in the face of the dread east wind. Curse that skinflint Rector! Better stay home and watch his wife! Did he want to drown everybody in the Cabanal? Sina Tona, in her underclothing, her thin gray hair undone and blowing in the wind, came running down to the water's edge. They had told her what the Rector had been up to. She had jumped out of bed to stop him.

"Pascualet!" she called. "Pascualet! Fill meu, torna, torna! Come back, come back!" But the two boats were already far, far, offshore.

And the poor woman, knowing that they could not hear her voice, began to wail and tear her hair, crying to God and to the saints in heaven! "Maria santisima! He is going to his death, the death of him, I say! Reina y soberana! Both my boys, and the little one, too!" What a curse had settled on her family! That pig of a sea would swallow them all, as it had killed her husband!

And the other women joined in her lamentation. But the men worked on in sullen frowning silence, unable to resist the jealous rivalry that was hurling them into the jaws of death in their relentless struggle for bread. They splashed out into the surf, till the water reached their belts. They climbed aboard their boats, and raised the sails. And soon a line of great white wings was vanishing into the mist, madly rushing seaward through the white caps, under a sky already lowering with tempest and black with the scowl of fateful augury.



CHAPTER X

"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