The sun constantly hastened toward the horizon. The ladies looked with foreboding as the shadows crept over the sky and the sea, and they cast anxious looks at the sailors. The frequent tacks made by the yawls delayed them extraordinarily, and at last they had to furl the sails and follow the direct course by oars. There is nothing strange in this, and it is the most usual way when the wind is not astern; but it happened that Rosarito, the Señorita de Morí's friend, took it into her head that the change from sails to oars signified imminent danger of shipwreck, and this she represented in her imagination with all the horrors by which it is surrounded in magazine stories,—the pitchy darkness of the night, the waves rising like mountains to the sky, the cries of the sailors mingling with the roaring of the sea, etc., etc. And being unable to control herself, she began to clutch her friend with nervous hands and to utter exclamations of anguish and fear.
"Alas! O God![49] we are going to perish, we are going to perish!"
"There is nothing wrong; calm yourself, Rosario."
"Yes, yes! we are going to perish ... we are going to be drowned.... O God, what a terrible death!... Why should I have gone to the island?... What will my papa say when he learns that his daughter is dead?... Papa! my heart's papa!"
"But, child alive, there's absolutely nothing to be afraid of!"
"Don't tell me so, for God's sake; because can't I see that they have lowered the sails. Alas! what a death! what a frightful death!... To die without confession!... To die away from my papa!... And to be buried right here in these awful black depths!... And be eaten by the fishes! and by crabs.... It's horrible!..."
The Señorita de Morí's efforts to calm her friend were useless. It added no little to her fright to hear the shouts of the sailors, who in order to encourage each other and overcome the resistance of the waves, at each stroke of the oars shouted in chorus, yo-heave-oh![50],—yo-heave-oh! Every time that this exclamation rang through the air with its brutal rhythm, Rosario breathed a shriek of anguish; till the vivacious Señorita de Morí, fearing that she was getting ill, said to the sailors,—
"Gentlemen, will you have the goodness not to say yo-heave-oh! for it greatly frightens this young lady."
But Rosario, quite irritated and shedding a sea of tears, instantly exclaimed,—
"No, no; let them say yo-heave-oh! but let us perish quickly if we are going to!..."