II
When Pancho and Doña Teresa and the Twins were ready they went in a little procession to the lake-shore. They found Pedro with his wife and baby and Pablo already there.
This was the very same Pablo on whose feet Tonio had put the lizard. He was Pedro’s son.
Pedro was loading the boat with bundles of reeds. They were the reeds used for weaving the petates[15] or sleeping-mats. The reeds grew all about the lake, but the people in the town could not easily get them, so Pedro had gathered a supply to sell to them.
The boat was quite large. It had one sail and there was a thatched roof of reeds over the back part of it. It was too large to bring into the shallow water near the shore, so [p 90] Pedro had rolled up his white trousers and was wading back and forth from the boat to the beach, carrying a bundle of reeds each time and stowing it away under the thatch.
Pancho at once took off his sandals, rolled up his trousers, and began to help carry the bundles, while Doña Teresa and the Twins sat on the sand with Pablo and the baby and their mother.
There was a large sack of sweet potatoes lying on the sand beside Pedro’s wife. You could tell they were sweet potatoes because [p 91] the bundle was so knobby. Besides Tonio felt of them.
“What are you going to do with your sweet potatoes?” asked Doña Teresa.
“I’m going to cook them in molasses and sell them,” said Pedro’s wife. “I shall sit under an awning and watch the fun and turn a penny at the same time. The baby is too heavy to carry round all day, anyway.”
“I’ll help you,” said Doña Teresa. “Very likely I shall be glad enough to sit down somewhere myself before the day is over.”
“Pedro made me a little brasero out of a tin box,” said his wife, “and I have a bundle of wood right here, and the syrup and the dishes, all ready.”
When the reeds had all been put on board, Pancho took Tonio in his arms and Pedro took Pablo, and they tossed them into the boat as if they had been sacks of meal. The boys scrambled under the covered part and out to the bow at once, and [p 92] Pablo got astride the very nose of the boat and let his feet hang over.
Then Pedro lifted Tita in.
It was more of a job to get the mothers aboard, for Pedro’s wife was fat, and he was a small man. Pedro shook his head when he looked at his wife, then he took off his sombrero, and scratched his head. At last he said, “I think I’ll begin with the baby.”
He took the baby and waded out to the boat and handed her to Tita, then he went back to shore and took another look at his wife. “It’ll take two of us,” he said to Pancho.
“I’m your man,” said Pancho bravely. “I can lift half of her.”
So Pedro and Pancho made a chair with their arms, and Pedro’s wife sat on it, and put her arms around their necks, and they waded out with her into the water.
They got along beautifully until they reached the side of the boat and undertook to lift her over the edge. Then there came [p 93] near being an awful accident, for Pedro’s foot slipped on a slimy stone and he let her down on one side so that one of her feet went into the water.
“Holy mother!” screamed Pedro’s wife. “They are going to drown me!”
She waved her arms about and jounced so that Pancho almost dropped the other foot in too, but just in time Pedro shouted, “One, two, three, and over she goes,” and [p 94] as he said over, he and Pancho gave a great heave both together, and in she went all in a heap beside Tita and the baby.
While she crawled under the awning and settled herself with the baby and stuck her foot out in the sunshine to dry, Pancho and Pedro went back for Doña Teresa. She wasn’t very stout so they got her in without any trouble.
They put in the brasero and all the other things, and last of all Pancho and Pedro climbed on board themselves, hoisted the sail, and pushed off. Luckily the breeze was just right, and they floated away over the blue water at about the time of day that you first begin to think of waking up.