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The boat of tio Borrasca was more to his taste than the grounded hulk on shore there with its grunting hogs and cackling hens. He worked hard; and to supplement his wages he got a few kicks from the old skipper, who could be gentle enough on land, but once with a deck under him would have made Saint Anthony himself toe the mark.
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 Murviedro. Not a boat had dared go so far from home that day.
But tio Mariano didn't like sentiment. What was he in the family for? He always had poor Pascualo on his mind. What a way to die! There was a man of pluck for you! Oh, by the way, the Rector would get a full third of the proceeds ... seeing he was one of the family.... You couldn't stick on your full rights with a boy of your own flesh and blood!
Tona would run her legs off finding him jobs which he would proceed to lose. For about a week he was apprentice to a cobbler. Then he went for a couple of months as "cat" on tio Borrasca's boat; and not even that stern disciplinarian was able to kick any obedience into him.
He had been hurled through the hatchway by a lunge of the deck before the boat had been lost. Inside there he had lain with his skull crushed. That boat the dream of his life, the achievement of thirty years of penny-saving had proved to be his coffin! Tio Pascualo's widow, in her hysterical weeping, shrank from the repugnant body.
Old tio Batiste knew where the best places were! But the Rector stopped and looked at his brother. The bandages on the injured hand had disappeared. So Tonet was in trim again already! That was good news to add to the good catch! He wouldn't miss the next sailing now! And he would see some real fishing, I'll tell you! Just the trouble of hauling them in, with your net full at every shot!
And tio Batiste knew many other useful things that you should not cast your seine on Hallowe'en, for instance, unless you wanted to bring up a corpse; or that the man who carried the Cross of the Grao on Good Friday would never die at sea. For that matter he had spent all his life on shipboard. By the time he was ten, he could show callouses under his arm-pits, from hauling at the lines.
At the foot of the promontory, from the shore where Tío Ventolera's boat was beached, rose the voice of the old fisherman singing mass. Febrer looked out the door, carrying both hands to his mouth in the form of a trumpet. Tío Ventolera, with the help of a boy, was shoving his boat into the water. The furled sail trembled aloft on the mast. Jaime did not accept the invitation.
After supper, the aunt repeated with devout cheerfulness those Spanish sayings, "God sends the sore, and knows the medicine," and "God sends the cold according to our rags." She believed that God would help. Arturo thought of the twenty-five cents in his pocket. He looked at old tio Diego. Arturo wondered if his uncle were really hungry. Beans!
Tio Mariano listened to the Rector with eyes half closed and a vertical line knit between his eyebrows. "Be d d, be d d! Of course! Not a bad idea at all, not at all!" That's the way he liked people with some gumption!
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