"Oh, that ain't wind, that's rain, agüelo! No, no, it's going to settle down to raining. An hour or two of chop, perhaps, but not enough to make a chicken sea-sick!"
"Well, it's rain or it's wind. But if it's wind, the way it looks from here, it's all day with the man that gets into it!"
"Oh, go along home, tio," the Rector snapped with a rudeness he had never used toward that old salt before. "There's a job up at the church for you, janitor or something. This boat is no place for cowards nor for invalids!"
"Coward, is it? Coward, eh? I've been to Havana twice in a fifty-footer, belly of a sick whale! And on the rocks twice, in weather that would make you blue in the gills! By God, take twenty years off this back of mine, and I'd rip you up the front for saying that, the way I would a codfish! But into the water she goes, boys! When the captain speaks, it ain't for the likes of me to raise a voice. Into the water with her, boys, and to hell with her!" And the furious old sailor was through grumbling in time to help lay the last skid before the Mayflower's bow touched the surf. Another pair of oxen was already pulling at the boat that was to go team with the Rector's newer craft; and in a few moments both vessels had raised their huge lateen sails, and were dashing fast through the outer breakers with every stitch of canvas drawing.
The skippers ashore stood looking on perplexedly. The Rector's outfit was now well out to sea, and jealousy began to rage within them. That lanudo had gone mad! The idea of putting to sea in the teeth of a threat like that! But he had his eye on the market! Making a clean-up, eh? While they were standing around with their hands in their pockets! It angered them, this selfish impudence, as though the Rector were out to catch all the fish left in the sea. The boldest and most jealous took the lead. "Well, sir, where he can go, I can go! Does he think he's the only man that can sail a boat around here? Haul her out, Chepa, haul her out, and be quick about it!"
The challenge was taken up all along the shore. "Boyero! Boyero!" Everybody began calling for the oxen at once, and the drivers did not know which way to turn. The madness of the Rector seemed to spread like wildfire from one end of the beach to the other. The women ashore began to shriek and protest at seeing their men go out in the face of the dread east wind. Curse that skinflint Rector! Better stay home and watch his wife! Did he want to drown everybody in the Cabañal? Siñá Tona, in her underclothing, her thin gray hair undone and blowing in the wind, came running down to the water's edge. They had told her what the Rector had been up to. She had jumped out of bed to stop him.
"Pascualet!" she called. "Pascualet! Fill meu, torna, torna! Come back, come back!" But the two boats were already far, far, offshore.
And the poor woman, knowing that they could not hear her voice, began to wail and tear her hair, crying to God and to the saints in heaven! "Maria santísima! He is going to his death, the death of him, I say! Reina y soberana! Both my boys, and the little one, too!" What a curse had settled on her family! That pig of a sea would swallow them all, as it had killed her husband!
And the other women joined in her lamentation. But the men worked on in sullen frowning silence, unable to resist the jealous rivalry that was hurling them into the jaws of death in their relentless struggle for bread. They splashed out into the surf, till the water reached their belts. They climbed aboard their boats, and raised the sails. And soon a line of great white wings was vanishing into the mist, madly rushing seaward through the white caps, under a sky already lowering with tempest and black with the scowl of fateful augury.