The Mayflower had been caught abeam by a huge breaker, and was being turned end over end. She was seen for a second, bottom up, and then she sank, out of sight.
The women crossed themselves. Strong hands laid hold on siñá Tona and Dolores, to keep them from leaping into the sea.
Everybody had guessed what that bundle was, floating out there toward the shore. "The boy! The boy!" The sailors could see him now in the life-belt. But he would be smashed against the stones. The two women were screaming for help, though not knowing how it should come nor from whom. Could not the child at least be saved! "The boy! The boy!"
A young man volunteered. To his sash he tied a line held in the hands of the men on shore. He jumped down to the low-lying rocks, and then farther out still, into the water. And he held himself there, against the boiling wash, by sheer strength and adroitness.
The little body came shoreward. It was thrown up against a sharp crag and then, to the dismay of the throng, torn loose by another wave.
At last the sailor got hold of it, as a breaker was about to dash it headlong against the wall.
Poor Pascualet! He was laid out on the muddy top of the Breakwater, his face covered with blood, his arms and legs cold and blue, the flesh cut and torn by the sharp edges of the rocks, his tiny form projecting from the big life-belt like a turtle from its shell. Siñá Tona tried to warm in her hands the little head whose eyes were closed forever. Dolores was kneeling at his side, digging her nails into her face, pulling frantically at her luxuriant beautiful hair, her eyes, of the glints of gold, rolling vacantly, wildly, in all directions, while piercing screams went out into space.
"Fill meu! Fill meu!"
To one side, in the crowd of weeping women, Rosario stood, the deserted, the childless wife, tearful in the presence of that anguished motherhood; and from the bottom of her soul she forgave her rival.
And on a rock, there, above them all, indomitable in the face of sorrow, proud and erect as Vengeance herself, towered the massive bony frame of tia Picores, her skirts lashing like pennons in the hurricane.