l in sight, and for an hour, while the people
ashore stood gripped in maddening suspense, they tacked and veered in
the hurricane, struggling against the dread currents that kept sweeping
them down the coast. At last they, too, got in, and a great sigh of
relief and satisfaction rose from the crowd.

But it was then that the black horizon was suddenly cleft by another
speck. A boat was driving shoreward in mad career though a mere shred of
canvas was visible at the foot of the bare pole The sailors who had
crept out to the most exposed rocks and were lying there on their
stomachs to offer least exposure to the wind and waves, looked at one
another despairingly. Too late, they all agreed. That straggler would be
the blood offering to the sea! Impossible to enter now!

Sharp eyes soon made out the identity of the craft. _Flor de Mayo!_
_Flor de Mayo!_ The boat came on, now swallowed in the deep trough, now
rearing on the crests of the combers. _Sina_ Tona and Dolores began to
shriek and scream like mad. They seemed bent on rushing out into the
water, and actually tried to reach one of the sea-swept boulders that
stood out in the surf like heads of giants peering above the turmoil.
And the sympathy and sorrow that misfortune brings to multitudes now
turned to the two women. Curses at the Rector ceased. Sailors gathered
round them with assurances that everything would be all right, though
some of the men, foreseeing the inevitable end of the ghastly battle,
tried to prevent them from looking on. And so an hour passed. A sight
to turn your hair white!

Pascualo, out at sea, felt the need of encouragement in his anxiety. And
he called to _tio_ Batiste.

"You know the Gulf, _tio_," he shouted. "What do you think of the looks
of things?"

But the old man, awakening with a start from his chill and torpor, shook
his head sadly, and on the face above his white goatee the resignation
of glorious, fearless manhood was written. No, in an hour it would be
all over! No crossing the tide-rip in a sea like that. You could take
his word for that! In all his life he had never seen such a wind! But
the Rector felt the strength for anything within him. "Well, if we can't
get in, we'll hold offshore, by God! and ride her out!" "No, you can't
do that. There's going to be two days of it, at least. The boat might
stand the seas, but you can't beat against this blow. If you try to
coast along, you'll strike at Cullera, and if you get by ther