But Pascualo suddenly, with a gesture of disdain, seemed to come out of his abstraction; and it was evident he felt ashamed at having lost hold on his tongue so far, in a moment of baseless alarm. He had had enough of Roseta, however. And, in fact, they could separate there. "Remember me to mother!" he said, as he turned down to the beach, leaving his sister to go on alone along the road toward the tavern-boat. But it was late that night before the influence of that disquieting conversation was lifted from Pascualo's mind. Tonet was at home when he arrived, but did not seem at all embarrassed in his presence. All a lie, of course! One look at the boy was enough to show that! The Rector looked searchingly into his own heart, and could find no trace of suspicion there. Nothing to it, absolutely, absolutely, nothing! And when, the men of the crew dropped in to get their final orders for the next day, he had forgotten the matter completely.
He had hired a boat to work in team with the Mayflower, though, with dog's luck, he would some day be able to build another just like her! Among the men was an old sailor whom the Rector listened to with profoundest respect. Tio Batiste was the oldest tar in the whole Cabañal. Seventy years of sailoring were stuffed into that sun-dried crackling hide of his, whence they issued, smelling to heaven of strong tobacco, in the form of practical suggestions and maritime prophecy. Pascualo had taken him on, not so much for the help his aged arms could give, as for the exact knowledge he had of the coast thereabouts. From the Cabo de San Antonio to the Cabo de Canet, the gulf did not have a hole nor a shallow that tio Batiste did not know all about. Turn him into a smelt and toss him overboard, and he'd tell you where he was, the minute he got to the bottom! The top of the water might be a closed book to other people; but he could read, from the looks of it, just what there was underneath.
He would sit up forward on the boat, and describe the bumps on the bottom as though he were on a wagon roughing the road-ruts. With one glance he could tell whether your boat was over the kelp grounds, or over the mud-banks, called El Fanch, or over those mysterious submarine hillocks, called the Pedrusquets, where the fishermen were always in terror of losing their nets on the sharp crags that cut the seines to shreds. Between the Muralls de Confit, the Bareta de Casaret and the Roca de Espioca, lay deep tortuous gullies far down under the sea. Tio Batiste could drag a net through the winding channel there without catching on a single rock, and without scooping up a mass of kelp that would break your tackle through. A dark night of fog! Not a lighthouse visible! Thick gloom ten feet ahead! One taste of the mud on your net, and the old wizard would say where you were to a hundred yards. Only a salmon or a squid could have been the teachers of that wondrous learning! And tio Batiste knew many other useful things—that you should not cast your seine on Hallowe'en, for instance, unless you wanted to bring up a corpse; or that the man who carried the Cross of the Grao on Good Friday would never die at sea.
For that matter he had spent all his life on shipboard. By the time he was ten, he could show callouses under his arm-pits, from hauling at the lines. He had a dozen trips to Cuba to his credit—not the kind of trips youngsters brag about nowadays, because they've been across as waiters or barbers on a big liner—but real voyages, in good old-fashioned faluchas, better built than they make them now, that went out with wine and came back with sugar, and were owned by gentlemen in cape-coats and top-hats! And every trip with a lamp on board, lighted at the wick floating in the oil bowl before the Christ of the Grao! And a rosary every night on board, without fail, unless you wanted something awful to happen! Those were the days, according to tio Batiste, the real days, for sailormen. And as he cursed on, the wrinkles would wiggle all over his face, and his ancient goatee would whip up and down; while vicious bits of forecastle obscenity would punctuate his contempt for the irreligion and the conceit of the younger generation of salts.
Pascualo liked to hear the old man talk. There was something of his old master, tio Borrasca, about him, and the man reminded him of his father, old Pascualo, too. Though the other members of the crew, Tonet, two sailors and the "cat," made fun of the venerable tar, and tried to get him angry all the time by assuring him he was too old for the business now, and that the curate would be willing to take him on as sacristan. Chentòla! Too old for real work, eh! Wait till they got out to sea, and they'd whistle another tune! The boys of these days don't know what a wind is! He'd be fanning himself, while they'd be calling for mama!
The next morning all the Cabin section was in motion. The bòu-boats would put to sea that evening after sundown—taking the men-folks offshore for their honest battle with the elements for bread. An annual migration of husbands, brothers and sons, this; but, nevertheless, the women, thinking of the months of worry and uneasiness they would have ahead of them till spring, could never take the event very calmly.
Captains were bustling about with their last preparations. They went down to the harbor to look over their boats, test the pulleys, run the lines, raise and lower the sails, pound the bottom over inside, be sure the supplies of rope and canvas were on hand, count baskets, examine nets. And when inventories were complete they would have still to go back to the office to get clearance papers from all those stuck-up fellows in white collars who could hardly speak to a workingman decently!
When the Rector went home for dinner at noontime, he found siñá Tona in the kitchen talking to Dolores, weeping her eyes out, and patting a bundle she held across her knees. When she saw her son coming, she began at him angrily. "I've just heard, and it's a pretty father you are! So Pascualet is going 'cat' on the Mayflower! A boy of eight, who might better be at home with his mother, or at least playing down at the tavern with me! The idea! A baby like that going to sea and made to do a man's work, and Lord knows what else! Well, I'm not going to stand it, I'm not! That's not the way to treat a child! And since his mother don't dare open her head, and his father is actually the one to blame, his grandma must take a hand! I've come to get Pascualet and take him home with me. I won't allow such a thing. Pascualet! Pascualet! Your grandmother wants to see you."
Pascualet came in, the little devil, swallowed up in a suit of yellow baize, barefoot, to be more in character, and with a sash that passed almost under his arm-pits and made his blouse bulge out like a balloon. Cocking his black cap down over one ear, he began to strut up and down in front of the women, imitating the tough and independent manner of tio Batiste, and trying to put some of that worthy's picturesque obscenity into the insults he heaped upon his grandmother for her efforts in his behalf. "I'm through playing at the tavern! You can keep your bread and cheese! I'm a man now, I am; and I'm going 'cat' in the Mayflower!"
His father and mother were in convulsions at the saucy antics of this chip of the old block. As for the Rector, he could have eaten the boy alive with kisses. But siñá Tona could only bawl and bawl like a cry-baby, till her son got really angry. "Mama, will you stop that noise! What do you think we are doing to the boy, cutting his throat? The world isn't coming to an end! Pascualet is just going to sea, the way his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather did. What do you want to make of him? A tramp? No, I want him to be a man of pluck, and able to do a day's work, and not be afraid of salt water, where his living is likely to be. If I can leave him a little bit, when I pass on, so much the better; but he ought to be ready to look out for himself. He'll be in no danger. But if he gets to know what a boat is, he'll go to it with his eyes open. Any one can have an accident, afloat or ashore. Just because my father ended the way he did is no signs we're all to end that way. Too much bawling around here! Give us a rest, will you!"