e, you'll
fetch up on the Cape. No, the one chance is running in. If it's dying,
let's die near home, where so many of the boys have died, and in sight
of the Christ of the Grao!" And _tio_ Batiste, hitching around in the
leashes that held him to the mast, got one hand into his shirt front,
drew out a tarnished crucifix of bronze, and kissed it devoutly over and
over again.

The old man's voice seemed to put spirit into the other men. "_Cristo!_
a pretty time for parson stuff!" Tonet jeered with a sepulchral laugh,
and the two sailors began to curse at the old man with blasphemous
obscenities. Danger, instead of crushing them, seemed to translate
despair into raving impiety. The skipper shrugged his shoulders
indifferently. A good Christian he was! If you didn't believe it, ask
don Santiago. But he knew one thing, that the only Christ who would
bring the _Mayflower_ through that fix was _Pascualo el Retor_, and he
might even do the trick if the damned boat minded her helm!

The proximity of shoal water was now quite apparent on the vessel. The
combers had stopped coming in huge but fairly regular mountains from
astern. A cross sea was running now, throwing a violent nasty chop back
against the wind, and the water, piled up along the shore, was tumbling
seaward in a gigantic undertow that broke to the surface in boiling
seething whirlpools. The _Mayflower_, every timber in her sound and
solid, creaked and strained in the new turmoil of conflicting forces.
She was virtually unmanageable between the impact of the gale from
astern and the water catching at her keel from forward and abeam. But
though great waves were breaking over her from all directions, her
hatches were firmly battened down, and nobly she struggled free each
time. The Rector understood, however, that, caught now in the tide-run
off the Breakwater, there was no alternative but to try for the harbor.

The people on the rocks were now in plain sight. Spray could be seen
dashing over them, and occasionally their anguished voices even reached
as far as the _Mayflower's_ deck. _Recristo!_ To be drowned like rats in
a trap, under the very eyes of your folks, and they unable to help you!
Dog of a sea! Pig of a wind! And the Rector, to vent his impotent fury,
spat at the waves, as the vessel reared and plunged this way and that,
the scuppers under, clear to the hatch, first to starboard and then to
port, the cross-yard shoving its point under at every roll.

"L