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 Cabanal? _Sina_ 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 santisima!_ 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.

CHAPTER X

"AND STILL THEY SAY FISH COMES HIGH!"

Four hours later the _Mayflower_ was off Sagunto in the channel which
_tio_ Batiste, with his habit of judging more from the bottom than from
landmarks on shore, was tracing between the _Roca del Puig_ and the kelp
grounds of Mu