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At the peak he could still see the sheaf of grass that had been hung up there for the christening and the bunch of dry flowers that the hurricane was whipping about at the end of one last strand. "Pare! Pare!" Pascualet, his face covered with blood and terrified at the catastrophe he felt impending, was calling to his father to save him! But his father could do nothing.
Every soul aboard her lost, and because they had obeyed his orders like true fishermen! And how many other vessels had met the same fate? There was deep shame on his face as he looked at tio Batiste and the two sailors, lashed to the mast there and whipped and bleeding in the storm! He did not choose to look at his brother nor at Pascualet.
The prospect of building another boat, before the year was out, to go in team with the Mayflower! And then a boy after his own heart! Pascualet took to salt water like a mackerel! Why, in time that youngster would be the best captain along shore! Better off, far, than the happy man in the story who didn't have a shirt to his back! He wouldn't have to worry about cold weather nor rainy days!
A number of children, Pascualet among them, were chasing a dog about in the mud of the gutters. Groups were sitting in front of the other houses along the road, to get full benefit of the faint breeze that was blowing off the sea. Redeu! How people must have been stewing in Valencia that night! Siñá Tona was getting very old. She had "taken her jump," as she put it.
At last the sailor got hold of it, as a breaker was about to dash it headlong against the wall. Poor Pascualet! He was laid out on the muddy top of the Breakwater, his face covered with blood, his arms and legs cold and blue, the flesh cut and torn by the sharp edges of the rocks, his tiny form projecting from the big life-belt like a turtle from its shell.
But the Mayflower will like to have it!" And he dropped it to the floor. When Pascualet, tugging and straining, finally got the thing on, his head and feet barely extended beyond the cork armor. He was a tortoise in a shell, for all the world! The meal was almost over, when Tonet came in, with a huge bandage around his hand.
A cataract had been removed from before his eyes, and he saw things clearly, though the world had a strange unfamiliar aspect for him, as it does to a blind man led forth for a first glimpse of it. Gospel truth! Pascualet was Tonet over again!
The older child, Pascualet, was the living likeness of his father, stocky, full-bellied, moon-faced. He looked like a seminary student specializing on the Refectory, and already the fishermen had dubbed him "the Rector," a nickname that was to stick to him for life. He was eight years older than Antonio, a lean, nervous, domineering little fellow who had Tona's eyes.
What do you think we are doing to the boy, cutting his throat? The world isn't coming to an end! Pascualet is just going to sea, the way his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather did. What do you want to make of him? A tramp? No, I want him to be a man of pluck, and able to do a day's work, and not be afraid of salt water, where his living is likely to be.
Then, she was afraid, yes, sir, afraid, that her Pascualet, her poor little Rector, would go the way his father went; and as the words hung tremulously upon her lips, she looked off toward the tavern-boat, just visible from the Mayflower's splendid hull, in which that martyr of the sea had met his frightful end.
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