nothing left in the world but the wreck of her husband's boat,
in which he had died. It lay rotting out there on the beach, high and
dry, now soaked by the rains, now oozing tar under the flaming sun, the
mosquitos breeding in the muck inside.

Tona suddenly had an idea. That boat might be good for something. It had
killed the father of those tots of hers. Why should it not help to feed
them? _Tio_ Mariano, a tight-fisted bachelor, first cousin to the late
Pascualo, and supposed to be quite well off, had taken a liking to the
widow's children; and however much it pained him, he went down into his
pocket and gave her the money to make her start.

In one side of the boat a hole was sawed to make a door and a small
counter. Against the wall inside some barrels of wine, gin and brandy
were ranged in line. The deck was taken off and replaced with a roof of
tarred boards, to give head-room, at least, in the dingy hovel. At the
bow and at the stern two portholes were cut, and two partitions were set
up with the boards remaining--one "stateroom" for the widow, the other
for the boys. A shelter with a thatched roof was raised in front of the
door; under it a couple of rickety tables, and as many as half a dozen
bamboo tabourets. The whole outfit made quite a show. The hulk of death
became a beach cafe within easy reach of the _casa del bous_, the barn
where the oxen for beaching and launching the boats were kept, and at
the very place where the fish was brought ashore and where some one was
always around.

The women folks of the Cabanal began to rub their eyes. That Tona was
the Devil himself! See what an eye she had for business! Her gin and
brandy went by the barrelful. The men who used to go to the taverns in
town now got their drinks right there of her. They were always playing
_truque y flor_ on the shaky tables under the shelter while waiting for
the boats to put to sea, brightening up the games with glass after glass
of _cana_, which Tona averred was genuine imported Cuban rum.

_Tio_ Pascualo's stranded craft went sailing, wind astern, on a new
voyage toward prosperity. Out there on the rocking sea with the old
skipper's seines, the boat had never earned so much as now under the
widow's charge, though its seams were open and its timbers were rotting
away. Evidence of profit could have been found in the successive
transformations the old hulk kept undergoing. First curtains went up on
the stateroom windows, and if you