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The calm determination in her did not shrink before those insults and those menacing fists. "Pascualo, Dolores is not being true to you," she repeated slowly, and with despairing firmness. "She is making a fool of you. And the man ... is ... Tonet!" The Rector stiffened in speechless fury! And his brother she would bring in too, in that low-down spiteful jealousy of hers! "Get out of here, I say!
The blackening rotting boat, rising from the reed enclosures around it, called up a flood of memories from the past. There they had played together, he and Tonet, running about over the sands. Tonet was on his shoulder, pulling at his hair in angry petulant disgust at not having his own way. Just inside those walls, the old stateroom, and the warm quilt thrown over the two of them!
It was on one of these sprees that he took the foolish step which cost his mother days and days of lamentation and weeping. Tonet, with some other boys of his kind, went and joined the navy. Life in the Cabañal had grown too tame for them, and the wine there had lost its flavor.
And siñá Tona, with a return of the preference which made her idolize her younger son, felt an occasional flare of jealous anger as she pictured her Tonet, her fine brave little boy, off on that navy vessel under the strict discipline of cross officers, while the other one, the Rector, whom she had always thought a sleepy-head, was getting on in the world like anything, and had come to be quite a person in fishing circles.
He was sorry to say so, but that poor Rosario was crazy. Tonet might be all he might be and it was true that brandy didn't do him any good! Just the same, it was a pity to see him tied to a woman about as easy to handle as a porcupine. But a brother was a brother in his eyes! He wasn't going to break with the son of his own father just to please that fool of a woman!
A flash of her mad passion for Tonet had come back to her. She was afraid he was to be killed. "Wait, Pascualo! Wait! It may be all a lie! I may have been deceived! You know how people talk! And Tonet is your brother!" But the Rector smiled in a cold sinister way. "I've heard enough from you. And you're right. I know you're right! And when I'm sure, I'm sure.
Much less at that particular moment, when there would be a chance to make a real man of Tonet. Dolores, though hardly yet recovered from the excitement of the brawl, nodded approval to all he said. And the Rector thought no more about it. He had that little matter on his mind.
A drinking place every two doors, with tables out on the sidewalks, and absinthe in big glassfuls! Tonet had seen it all himself, and described everything with gestures or grimaces that vividly pictured each episode and kept his companions laughing noisily. And up there was the Moorish city.
Even those caught in the hold of the Garbosa had been pried loose from the crushed timbers, now sunk deep in the sand. Tonet and the two sailors had salvaged the sail, and the few things of value left aboard, and were carrying their load off up the beach. The "cat," meanwhile, who had been washed overboard by the great wave that first swept the boat, had been revived.
Pascualo smiled bitterly! What the devil did he care! Certainly, haul her in when you please! The crew began pulling at the cable that stretched from the lower edge of the net to either boat, and they pulled and pulled joyously. In spite of the wet weather and the back-breaking exertion, Tonet and the sailors were in great glee. This was something like a haul! A hundredweight at every foot!
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