Children came up in droves to press their sniffling noses on the good priest's hand, which at every step, almost, had to let the train fall into the muck. Women greeted smilingly from the sidewalks. The dear old pae capellá! What a good-natured soul—never too harsh on penances, but able to see through you, just the same, if you tried to fool him. Don Santiago had the secret of adapting himself to the weaknesses of his flock. Many a time he would stop in the street to extend his blessings over the fish baskets of some woman of the market, or touch his fingers miraculously to a pair of short scales to charm it against any danger lest the inspectors of Valencia detect its fraudulent weights!
When the procession reached the shore, the bells began to ring, mingling their garrulous ding-dong in the gentle crunching of the surf. Late comers could be seen running along the sands to arrive in time for everything. There, on a stretch of beach that was quite free of boats, the Mayflower rose from the middle of a swarming crowd, her bright varnished sides gleaming white in the sunlight, her rakish mast, gracefully tilted forward, standing out against the blue, its peak adorned with the baptismal insignia of a new boat, sheaves of grass and bunches of cloth flowers, that would hang up there till the storm winds finally wrenched them loose.
The Rector and his party elbowed their way through the crowd pressing around the boat. At the stern were the two sponsors—siñá Tona, godmother, in a new shawl and skirt; and "Señor" Mariano, god-father, in his tall hat and with his cane, in the very get-up that he wore at his talks with the Governor in town! The whole family offered a spectacle of gay and showy magnificence. Dolores had her pink dress on, and a new kerchief of flaming colors; while her fingers gleamed with every ring she owned. Tonet was strutting about on deck in his new suit, his shining silk cap pulled down over one ear, twirling his mustache in immense satisfaction that his conspicuous position enabled so many pretty girls to sate their eyes on him. On the ground, with Roseta, was his Rosario in the least shabby of her gowns, and sure not to make trouble with Dolores on such a solemn day. The Rector, for his part, had turned Englishman over night. He was sporting a blue woolsey suit that a friend of his, an engineer on a steamer, had brought on from Glasgow. On his vest shone a watch chain as big as one of the stays on his boat—and that was the real surprise he had saved for the celebration. He was sweating like a stoker in that garment that might have done very well in winter. He had taken upon himself the task of keeping order, shoving people back when they edged up too close to the priest and the baptismal party. "The idea, gentlemen.... That talking, there! Sh-h-h. This ceremony is not a thing to laugh about. The fun, later on ...!" And he set a good example by taking off his cap and putting on a long face, as the chaplain, sweating just as much under that stifling cope, was fumbling through his book to find the prayer beginning Propitiare Domini supplicationibus nostris et benedic navem istam.... Siñá Tona and tio Mariano on either side of the curate stood with eyes nailed to the ground. The sacristan watched his master like a cat after a mouse, ready to say amen on the slightest pretext. The multitude with heads bare was hushed and still, as though something extraordinary were about to happen.
Don Santiago knew his public. He read the simple prayer slowly and solemnly, making each syllable stand out, and introducing impressive pauses to take full advantage of the general silence. The Rector, quite beside himself with emotion and not knowing what he was doing, nodded assent to every word, as though taking those Latin phrases that were falling on his Mayflower seriously to heart. What he really caught was all that about Arcam Noe ambulantem in diluvio; and he straightened up to his full height in pride, at the vague feeling that his boat was being likened to that ancient craft, the most famous in Christian annals! So he was a real comrade now of that wicked old patriarch who invented wine and became the first and best sailor of his time, on earth! Siñá Tona could stand the strain no longer. She crammed her handkerchief into both eyes to keep the tears from bursting out. When the prayer was over, the curate reached for the hyssop: Asperges ... and he sprinkled a rain of water upon the boat's stern, and the spray dripped down in shining drops over the painted sides. Amen, said the sacristan; and don Santiago, with the Rector in front of him to clear the way, and followed by the sacristan, amening every word, started round the boat, showering Latin and holy water at every step.
Pascualo could not understand that the ceremonies were over. "See here, don Santiago! There's the rigging still to do, and the deck, and then down in the hold! There's a good fellow! It won't take you long ... and I'll do what's right, you know!" And the curate, smiling at the earnestness of the young man's plea, went up, finally, to the ladder that had been set up against the Mayflower's bilge, and began the ascent, catching the floundering cope underneath his feet on every rung. And the vestment of white and gold caught the afternoon sun and gleamed afar like the shell of a bright climbing scarab. But when he had blessed everything to the Rector's full content, he withdrew with his assistant, and the throng rushed for the boat like an army storming a wall.
They would give her the right send-off, that crowd of bedraggled loud-talking ragamuffins, the scrapings from the whole beach, already besieging the sponsors with their petulant whining: "Our candy now, and the almonds, the almonds!" "Señor" Mariano's face was beaming omnipotent over the vessel's side. "Candy, eh! It's candy you want!" He well knew what all the good things he had brought to eat had cost—one whole onza—gold—to keep on good terms with nephew! And he bent over, and sunk his hands into the baskets between his legs. "Well, candy it is!" And he began to rain nuts and cinnamon lozenges, as hard as bullets, upon the heads of the clamoring mob, and the young ones, girls and boys, began to scramble on the sand, fighting for the goodies, dirty underskirts squirming about among trousers with huge rents that showed the bare scaly skins of the beach-combers underneath.
Tonet was uncorking bottles of gin and pointing them out to special friends with lavish and condescending urgency as if he were doing the honors himself. Liquor began to pass around by the jugful. Everybody was drinking—the beach guards, their guns on their shoulders, retired sea-captains from the village, men from other boats—barefoot, mostly, these, and dressed in yellow baize, like clowns—and tiny "cats," with knives of grotesque proportions thrust crosswise into the sashes about their ragged waists.
The real carousal was going on up on deck. The planking of the Mayflower was beginning to clack like the polished floor of a ball-room, and the rich smell of a tavern was filling the atmosphere about the boat. Dolores, who could resist the call of all that gayety no longer, started to climb the ladder, kicking out at every rung at the crowd of pestering "cats" who gathered round for one look at the ankles of the pretty girl as she went higher. The Rector's wife knew that her real element was up there where there was so much man around, where her charms would be certain of voracious admiration as she stamped about on boards that belonged to her—every inch of them—and where the women down below, especially Rosario—she would be green with envy—could get a good look at her success.
Pascualo, meanwhile, was with his mother. On that solemn occasion, which meant so much to him, which he had looked forward to for so long, he felt a strange return of his affection for the poor old woman. He forgot his beautiful wife and even Pascualet—the rogue was as busy as could be with the cinnamon balls, up on deck—to give all his attention to siñá Tona.
"A full-fledged master, outfitter, owner of a boat—my own boat!" And he kissed and hugged the old mother who was weeping streams from her puffy eyes. Tona's thoughts indeed were running back over long, long years of widowhood and loneliness and ostracism and over the memory of that mad adventure with the guardsman, to a similar christening she had witnessed in her youth. Tio Pascualo rose before her memory, strong, young, handsome, as she had known him in the days of their courtship. And his departure from life became as bitterly sorrowful as if he had vanished but the day before. "My boy, my boy—fill meu, fill meu!" she sobbed, throwing her arms about the sturdy neck of the Rector, who at that moment seemed to be the resurrection of his father's very self.