he was a man of muscle, and he loved the sea.
No, he must be a fisherman like his father!

When _sina_ Tona heard such remarks the terrifying thought of the
catastrophe of that Lenten Tuesday would come back to her mind. But the
boy held his ground. Things like that didn't happen every day. And since
he felt a hankering for it, the profession of his father and his
grandfather was good enough for him; and _tio_ Borrasca, an old skipper
who had been a great friend of _tio_ Pascualo, thought so too.

One year when the drag-net season came around, the _pesca del bou_, as
the Valencians say, where two boats worked in team, Pascualet shipped
with _tio_ Borrasca as "cat," _gato de barca_, for his keep, and all he
might make, in addition, from the _cabets_, the small fry, shrimp,
sea-horses and so on, that came up in the nets from the bottom along
with the big fish.

His apprenticeship started auspiciously. Up to that time Pascualet had
gotten along on the old clothes his father had left. But _sina_ Tona
wanted him to begin his new trade with real dignity; so she closed the
tavern, one afternoon, and went off to a ship chandler's bazaar at the
Grao. The boy remembered the excitement of that visit to the stores for
years and years. What gorgeous things, those blue coats, those yellow
oilskins, those big rubber boots--only captains could afford them,
surely! But he was proud, withal, of his own helper's outfit--two shirts
of mallorquin, as stiff and prickly and rough as so much sand-paper, a
sash of black wool, a set of glaring yellow overalls, a red cap to pull
down over the back of his head in bad weather, and another of black silk
to go ashore in. For once in his life he had on clothes that fitted him.
He was through struggling with those old coats of his father that on
blowy days filled like mainsails and made him trot down the wind in
spite of himself. Shoes had been out of the question. Those nimble feet
of his had never known the torment of a leather casing.

And a real calling it was that the boy felt for the sea. The boat of
_tio_ Borrasca was more to his taste than the grounded hulk on shore
there with its grunting hogs and cackling hens. He worked hard; and to
supplement his wages he got a few kicks from the old skipper, who could
be gentle enough on land, but once with a deck under him would have made
Saint Anthony himself toe the mark. He could run up the mast to set the
lantern or clear a line as spryly as a cat