"Come along with us, Rosario," tia Picores suggested. "We'll be a bit crowded, but we can get you home."
The girl refused, however. "Good-by, Rosario," said Dolores, smiling graciously. "You know, we are friends now." And she climbed in after her aunt. The wagon creaked under these two solid additions to its burden, but finally drove off with a music of squeaking joints and loose wheels. Rosario stood looking after it as if she were awakening from a dream. Could it all be true? Had she really made friends again with that hateful thing?
CHAPTER VI
THE SMUGGLERS
It was deep night; but the beacon on the Cabo de San Antonio, winking with a blinding glare like the eye of a Cyclops, broke the foam curling under the Garbosa's bow into spangles of colored radiance and sent a seething, restless, dancing pathway of fire out over the troubled waters. The adventurers were sailing close in shore before a faint land breeze. To starboard lowered the gigantic battlements of the Point, precipitous, weather-beaten, blackened by storm and sea. Inland against the starlit sky the somber Mongó reared its lofty head.
It had taken a whole day to cross the Gulf of Valencia; but now beyond the Cape the fair road to Algiers was opening, and the Garbosa would soon be out on the deep sea. Astern at the tiller, his eye studying the black outline of the promontory and checking up his bearings on the murky glass face of an old compass of tio Mariano's, sat the Rector, anxiously consulting Tonet, the experienced hand on board, the only member of the crew who had been "across the way."
"Easy as could be. The Cape, and then Southeast, Southeast, without swerving. Set her right, and she'll get there by herself, if this wind holds!"
The Rector gave a pull at the tiller with both hands. The Garbosa, groaning like an invalid turning over in bed, swung around to the course. The gentle swell that had been roiling her slightly from abeam she now caught full under the bow, and she began to pitch, setting the foam aboil. The light now came from dead astern, dousing its white sweep in the rippling wake of the vessel.
"And now for a bit of sleep!" Tonet stretched out on a coil of line at the foot of the mast and pulled a piece of canvas over him. His brother would steer till midnight, when it would be his turn till dawn.
The Rector was now the only one awake on board the Garbosa. The thrashing of the water forward was not loud enough to drown the snores from the crew sleeping almost at his feet. For the first time in his life, Pascualo was uneasy. He could draw a seine in a full gale. He had never thought once of danger in the worst of weather. But now, in his loneliness, he was filled with all manner of forebodings. How was this venture going to turn out? What a responsibility to be in charge of one's own enterprise! Would the old hulk hold together if a storm struck her? Supposing they were caught on the way back with a full load! And he sat on, listening to the agonized moans that came from the Garbosa's joints, as she took the seas, or looking up at the throats of the giant bellying canvas which, as it swayed to and fro, seemed to be scraping the sky with the point of the mast.