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Updated: June 8, 2025
The absolute solitude of the seashore, the darkness as black as the night before Creation, the complete aloofness from every human being, brought a touch of sweetness back into that travailing spirit, with the impulse toward forgiveness. Pascualo was recovering to a new life. It seemed as though another being were inside him, and thinking for him. Anguish had put an edge on his intelligence.
While Pascualo was putting body and soul into his new enterprise, Tonet, with his share in the booty the Rector had done his best to make it as large as could be was enjoying one of his seasons of prosperity. In the tumble-down shack where he lived with Rosario to the tune of quarrels, swear-words and cudgelings, not the slightest trace of abundance entered after the lucky trip "across the way."
And since he felt a hankering for it, the profession of his father and his grandfather was good enough for him; and tio Borrasca, an old skipper who had been a great friend of tio Pascualo, thought so too.
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.
The women of the Cabañal raised their voices in weird lamentation and trooped in company behind the wooden box that was carried at once to the cemetery. For a week tio Pascualo was the subject of every conversation. Then people forgot about him, save that the appearance of his mourning widow, with one child in her arms and another at her side, chanced to remind them of his grewsome end.
As the waves rolled by the promontory they sent great smooth undulations back into the calm of the bay. As soon as it was light, Pascualo went ashore, and up over a winding trail he found, he climbed the cliffs, to study the looks of things between the islet and the mainland, which still lay invisible in the storm. Not a sail in sight! But that did not reassure the Rector.
Pascualo did not look at his little son, but darted, like a phantom, off along the black shore, running into boats at times, then stumbling into the deep puddles that the sea had dug out in the sand in stormy weather. But he was feeling better! It was a relief to be thinking that he would soon be talking to Rosario again. Those terrible insults she had hurled at him had stopped hurting.
For as much as a quarter of an hour the two of them walked on in silence, Roseta frightened at the possible outcome of their conversation; Pascualo, in a gloomy mood, stumbling along with lowered head and frowning darkly whenever he raised his eyes, clenching his fists as though in struggle with an evil thought that would not down.
But tio Batiste, from his place on the tip of the bow, where every dash of spray was reaching him, gave a sudden call: "Look, Pascualo, Pascualo! Look! There she comes! There she comes!" The old fisherman was pointing to the horizon, where the leaden mantle of cloud seemed to be condensing into a blackish vapor. The Rector had been watching the men hauling at the net.
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!
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