e woman folks ought to stay at home. But I like to see men
and not cowards in the fish business." He spoke in a tone of voice that
did not seem to invite argument, and as though the suggestion of his
staying in had veiled an insult. He turned his back on the skippers
around, to get away from them, get away from everybody, who might know,
and ... laugh! "Into the water with her, boys!" And the oxen came out of
the barn and down toward the shore. "Hey, _Flor de Mayo_ there!
Overboard, all hands, and get the skids down!"

The men in the crew obeyed their orders as they were trained to do,
unquestioningly. Only _tio_ Batiste raised a voice of protest, and he
spoke with his full authority as a bull-dog of the sea.

"God, man, where are your eyes this morning! Don't you see the wind off
there! Blowing like hell, man alive!"

"Oh, that ain't wind, that's rain, _agueelo!_ 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!