Mayflower (Flor de mayo) Part 13

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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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. "G.o.d, have we sailors or women aboard here? And you came from the Caba.n.a.l, and are afraid of a bit of sea! You'd think you fellows had never been offsh.o.r.e! 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 Caba.n.a.l in the distance, vanis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed in the streets of the village! Those four gla.s.ses of brandy at the tavern! That argument with the men on sh.o.r.e, 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 ash.o.r.e, get those men ash.o.r.e, 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 h.e.l.l 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 Caba.n.a.l 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 s.h.i.+ning with the angry sweat of the tempest.

On the farthest projection of the jetty, where the storm surf was das.h.i.+ng 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and suppliantly promising ma.s.ses, 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 ma.s.sive 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 h.e.l.l of wind and wave and whirlpool.

Three boats were still in sight, and for an hour, while the people ash.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.eward 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 ident.i.ty 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 mult.i.tudes now turned to the two women. Curses at the Rector ceased. Sailors gathered round them with a.s.surances 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 pa.s.sed. 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 offsh.o.r.e, by G.o.d! 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 d.a.m.ned 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 n.o.bly 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 das.h.i.+ng 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, crus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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. G.o.d, could it not soon be over! Why torment honest sailors so? They had done no harm! "Let her go, Pascualo, let her go, for G.o.d'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 gra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning water was curling; and a back-wave just as high was rus.h.i.+ng 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 anguis.h.!.+ 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 Caba.n.a.l?

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 G.o.d'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, cras.h.!.+ and it's over. And so on, from father to son, generation after generation!

Such thoughts pa.s.sed 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 ragam.u.f.fin stranger to respect and consideration for other people. He smiled ferociously, cynically, back at his brother.