Mayflower (Flor de mayo): A Tale of the Valencian Seashore

At nine o'clock that night, taking her course from a lighthouse, and groaning and cracking as she bucked into a nasty sea, the Garbosa shot into the Big Columbreta, an extinct volcanic crater, caved in, on one side, leaving a half-circle of steep, wave-eaten cliffs, within which the water is calm, unless the storm happens to be coming from the East. This island, uninhabited save by the keepers of the lighthouse, has not a trace of beach. The abrupt, precipitous walls of lava are too bare to feed a tree, so hot is the sun in summer, so heavy is the air with salt. At their base are piles of pebbles that the storm-surf has rolled on high, with a mixture of flotsam and jetsam and dead fish. Scattered around the larger islet lie the Little Columbretas, – the Foradada, piercing the surface of the water like the arch of a submarine temple, and a cluster of barren rocks, bald, sheer-faced, unapproachable, like the fingers of some prehistoric colossus buried there in the depths.

The Garbosa came to anchor in the pool. No one seemed to notice her presence. The lighthouse people were accustomed to these visits of mysterious craft, which, for that matter, came to this solitary archipelago just because they did not want to be noticed. The sailors could see the lights in the buildings on shore and hear voices even, but they paid no more attention to them than to the gulls that darted rapidly by overhead on the blasts of the gale, wailing like infants in agony. Outside, and on the windward shore of the island, the sea was snarling angrily. 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. The Columbretas were notorious as a refuge for smugglers in bad weather. He was sure his pursuers would follow him there. At the same time he was afraid to put to sea again in that leaky boat. Not afraid to die, but how about that load of tobacco, and the money he had put into it! Yes, but stay there, and have the government get it? Not much! To sea, then, even if the whole thing went to the bottom for the sharks to smoke! No coast guard was ever going to brag about getting rich on him!

After the meal at noon time, the Garbosa spread her sail, and left the sheltered anchorage as mysteriously as she had come. She said not even good-by to the lighthouse people who came out on the platform in front of the beacon to see her off. Diós, what a wind! First a slap here and then a slap there! The Garbosa almost stood on her stern end as she was lifted by the first wave, outside; but she staggered free and shoved her nose into the green of the trough that followed, as though she were headed for the depths through one of those gigantic eddies that blinked like treacherous eyes of the abyss. Then, crash! The next comber came full aboard, the water churning into a white roar or atomized in spray, and sweeping aft in cascades over the bales of tobacco, while the crew, soaked to the skin, held on for dear life. Tonet grew pale, and clenched his teeth. He didn't mind bad weather in the right boat; but it was fool business leaving shelter in that God-forsaken punt. But the Rector, pot-bellied numskull that he was, would not listen to reason! The driveling idiot seemed to grow fat on getting people into trouble! And in fact, Pascualo's moon-face was glowing in the excitement of this battle with the sea. At every buffet of the waves he smiled, a purple flush suffusing his features, as though he were rising from a holiday meal. His arms seemed part and parcel of the heavy tiller, and his legs might just as well have been nailed to the deck. As the old Garbosa leapt and lunged, shrieking in every seam from stem to stern as though in panic-stricken agony, the Rector's spherical corpulence scarcely moved at all.

"What's the matter with you fellows?" And he would laugh with the loud bellow with which he applauded funny stories ashore – as soon as he saw the point in them. "Scared? Diós, why don't you wait till we get a breeze? Hardly enough air out this afternoon to catch your breath! Here she comes, here she comes! Brrrmm! Never touched the old girl! If that fellow had gotten us, good-night and good-morning! Anyhow, in the other world every day is Sunday, the parson says! Die young, and the lobsters eat you; die old, and it's the worms! What's the difference! Me for a short life and a gay one! And if need be, we can swim for it. Hey there, here she comes! Brrrrum! Tra, la, la! Missed again!.."

And the Rector talked on, expounding the sailor's philosophy of life he had learned offshore under tio Borrasca. But no one listened, except the "cat," who was on his first voyage, and stood clinging, palish-green with fright, to the mast, but with eyes and ears, nevertheless, for everything.

Night fell. The Garbosa was hanging on under a close-reefed sail, driving head foremost into the pitchy dark. The lanterns had not been lighted, for the risk of being seen was worse, almost, than the danger of a collision. About nine o'clock, the Rector gave a frantic pull at the rudder. A light had appeared in the mist, close by off the port bow. It was a boat beating down in the opposite direction. Pascualo could not make out the lines of the craft as she sped past; but he knew it was the cutter, which had tired of loafing off the Cabañal, and was boldly running for the Columbretas to catch the smugglers in their refuge before the storm cleared. For the first time since leaving the pool that afternoon, the Rector let go the tiller for a second. "This, for a pleasant night!" laughed he, making a coarse but expressive gesture of contempt towards his vanishing enemy.

At one o'clock another light came up ahead. Rosario! Rosario! That's the beacon on the Church! Square off the Cabañal! And just the time to make a landing! But would the folks at home be on hand?

The Rector headed inshore, but then his astonishing good humor gave way to a thoughtful mood. He knew what that coast was like. If he tried to lie to in that blow, it would be all over in two hours. They would smash up, either on the Breakwater or on the bars in front of Nazaret. To run offshore was out of the question. The Garbosa was getting loggier and loggier every moment. The water was already way up in the hold. She would break to pieces in the sea before morning. There was no other way out of it. Ashore she must go, and trust to luck! Driving as much before the breakers as before the gale, the vessel held straight on toward the beach still shrouded in gloom. Suddenly another light! And it flashed three times, and went out. Then, three times again! Tonet joined the Rector in a cry of joy. Tio Mariano was on watch ashore. It was the signal agreed upon. He had scratched three matches under cover of a shawl, which kept the light from being seen except from the sea.

It looked like madness, but the Rector had the reef cut out of the sail. The Garbosa spurted like a race-horse, showing her keel, as she lunged through the waves, now forward and now astern. The boom of the surf ahead could now be heard above the howl of the gale. Finally, from the top of a comber, the beach came into view, the black profiles of the houses standing out against the sky. Then a sharp, snapping, crunching crash! The boat stopped short, grinding and groaning as though her timbers were being torn asunder. The wind caught the sail and the mast went overboard. A huge breaker burst over the stern, washing the men off their feet, and loosening the bales from their fastenings. The Garbosa had struck bottom, but only a few yards from dry land. Out through the surf a swarm of dark figures streamed, splashing into the water and rushing at the boat. Men climbed up on board, and without saying a word to the Rector and his crew, who stood there still speechless from the shock, they began to pick up the bundles and pass them on from hand to hand.

"Tio, tio!" the Rector called, finally recovering his wits, and leaping into the water, which hardly passed his belt.

"Here I am," came the answer from the dark. "But shut up, for God's sake, and get to work!"

And it was a strange weird spectacle, indeed. Darkness, everywhere, and a sea bellowing in the gloom, the reeds and shore-grass bent low under the gale, the breakers tumbling in as though bent on swallowing up the land, while a legion of dark-skinned men, with their clothes off, tugged at great bales in the hold of the vessel that was rapidly going to pieces, or fished them out from the foaming waters and dragged them up on the beach, where they disappeared mysteriously, while, in the intervals between gusts of wind, the sound of creaking wagon wheels could be heard.

Tio Mariano was walking about from one point to another in his long-legged boots, calling off sharp, imperious orders, and flourishing a revolver in his hand. There was no danger from the revenue men. The guards had all been "greased," and were watching to give the alarm if their chief arrived. The gun was for those silent workmen handling the bales, a light-fingered crew, faithful disciples of the doctrine that to steal from a thief is a virtue. But none of them would sneak anything away in the confusion! By God, the first man who tried any tricks would get something!

By the time the Rector had recovered his composure after that nerve-racking day and that terrible landing through the surf, and after he had stopped nursing the bruises received from a fall as the vessel struck, the last wagon was driving off; and the long-shoremen had vanished silently in all directions, as though the beach had eaten them alive. Not a bundle had been lost. 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.

"Oh, tio!" the Rector exclaimed, when at last he was alone with his uncle. "I can say that now, can't I! It was a tough job, but we pulled it off, didn't we? The Christ of the Grao stood by us fine! We'll figure up accounts by and by, eh? Now I'm going home to Dolores. And won't she be glad to see me!"

And the pair walked off toward the distant village with scarcely a glance at the poor vessel. The old Garbosa lay there grinding up and down, her nose in the sand, taking each breaker full over the stern, at each crash losing some shred of her entrails out into the night. And thus she died, like a worn-out horse, that labors on in the noblest of emprises without glory and without reward, and finally leaves its bones on the wayside to be picked white by buzzard and crow.

CHAPTER VII

THE NAMING OF THE BOAT

Some days later, tio Mariano handed Pascualo the tidy sum of twelve thousand reales, the captain's share in the proceeds of the venture. But money was the least of the Rector's earnings. He had established himself now solidly in his uncle's grace, for the old man, with very slight risk to his own hide, had cleaned up twice that amount. Besides, the moment the whole story had gone the rounds, Pascualo became the lion of the Valencian water-front. A stroke of genius, that break from the Columbretas in a full gale! The cutter put in there at the height of the storm – and that was no child's play either – but she had her trouble for her pains!

The Rector stood quite aghast at his own good fortune. Adding the profits on the "moonshine" to the pile of money that, dollar by dollar, he and Dolores had stowed away in the place they only knew, you got a figure with which any honest man could start "something." And this "something" must of course have to do with the sea; for Pascualo was not the man to sit around in an easy chair, like his uncle, and skin poor people on shore alive! Smuggling, meanwhile, as a regular thing, was out of the question. That's a thing a young fellow ought to do once, to get his hand in; just as he ought to gamble – for once – since fortune is likely to favor the beginner. But it doesn't pay to flout the devil, in the long run. For a man like the Rector, fishing was the only certain trade, but in his own boat, with nothing lost to outfitters, who sit quietly at home and skim the cream of every catch.

There were many sleepless nights for the sturdy sailor, who kept rolling over and over between the sheets and waking Dolores up to get her opinion on each new idea. At last he made up his mind. His capital must go into a boat, not an ordinary boat, you understand, but the very best, if that were possible, of all the craft that ever set sail from the beach in front of the ox-barn there. His day had come at last, rediel! No more deck-hand business for him, and no more of this going halves. He would own a vessel, and the pole he would plant in front of the house, to carry the nets when drying, would be the tallest in the neighborhood!

And that hull on the ways there, ladies and gentlemen, belongs to the Rector from the Cabañal! His wife, Dolores the beautiful, Dolores the charming, will still have a stall in the Fishmarket, for all her wealth; but she will be selling her own fish soon, her own, I'll have you know. And as the women on their way to the Pescadería now walked along the Gas House drain past the boat yard, with envious eyes they noticed the Rector always hanging around there chewing the end of a cigar, and supervising the carpenters as they sawed and hammered and planed away at the long yellow pitchy brand-new timbers, some of them straight, and strong, and thick, others of them light and curving – the keel, the ribs, the sheathing, of the projected boat! Now, not too fast, boys, not too fast! The Rector is taking his time at this job as at everything else. Go slow and then you'll be sure. No mistakes allowed! There's no hurry! The main thing is to see that this boat is the very best along the shore!

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." The poor woman was as usual up at sunrise to carry her baskets of fish to Valencia or even to Torrente or Betera, at times – always on foot – to save the price of a wagon. And when the weather was not right for fishing, she spent her days in her hovel, in company with her poverty and her despair. But Tonet, her Tonet, was handsomer than ever, in a new suit of clothes, with money in his pockets all the time, and a regular seat in the café, except when he was away, with some of the boys, at Valencia, going the rounds of the gambling joints, or spending gay nights in the Fishmarket section. Nevertheless, whenever he saw his uncle, and not to allow any of his claims on that worthy gentleman's pull to lapse, he would bring up the subject of the job on the harbor survey; for, chasing that position was his one serious occupation in times when he was out of money.

The fleeting prosperity that the African venture brought took him back to the joyous days of his marriage. With that happy virtue he had of taking no thought for the morrow, and with all that cynical gayety which endeared him so to women, he was not worried about what would happen when the wind-fall his brother had brought him should be exhausted. For that matter, his companions in roistering sometimes paid, and he had an occasional run of luck at cards. He would come home late at night to go to bed, scowling and cursing between his teeth. But woe to Rosario if she ventured any protest. For periods of two or three days, at times, he would not be seen there at all. Not so, however, in his brother's house. There he went frequently, loafing about the kitchen with Dolores, if the Rector was not at home, listening with bowed head and resigned humility, to the lectures she gave him on his scandalous conduct. When Pascualo happened in on one of these dressing-downs, he always seconded loyally the sound preaching of his wife. Yes, sir, Dolores was cross like that, because she was really fond of him! As a respectable woman, she couldn't afford to have a brother-in-law tearing around all the time and being the talk of the town. And the fat good-natured sailor's eyes would fill with tears, ira de diós, at what his Dolores was saying, a real woman, by God, as kind as a mother to that fool of a boy!

As his funds got lower, Tonet's attendance on his brother's household was still more assiduous. He was turning the motherly advice he got there to good account. And to avoid any chance of gossip, he showed himself day after day with the Rector up at the boat-yard, watching the progress of the big frame which was now receiving its planking and was gradually taking shape under the persistent efforts of hammer, ax and saw.

And summer was coming on. The stretch of seashore between the Gas House drain and the harbor, so solitary and deserted at other seasons of the year, was busily returning to life. The heat was beginning to drive the whole city to the water's side, where a veritable town of movable houses, like the temporary encampment of an army, was growing up. In a measured line along the sands ran the shacks of the vacationers, cheap structures with walls of painted canvas and roofs of cane, front doors labeled with fantastic names, and, to distinguish one camp from so many others like it, flag-staffs on the gables with banners of all colors, and above the flags, queer weathervanes – boats, dragons, dolls, gew-gaws of every shape and form. In a second line, farther from the shore, and speculating on the appetite that salt air awakens in dyspeptics, came the more pretentious and the more permanent structures of the restaurants and eating-places, with stairways and verandas, façades of ornate but inexpensive stucco, masking the frailty of such pomp under ostentatious names: The Paris Hotel and Restaurant, The Miramar, The Fonda del Buen Gusto; and between these pedants of summer-time gastronomy, the lunch-rooms of the natives, huts with roofs of matting, rickety tables with wine jugs in the center, and outdoor kitchens, dispensing shell-fish with vinegar dressing from Saint John's day till mid-September, under signs of delightfully capricious spelling: Salvaor and Neleta, wines, bears and likers.

Along the roads through this mushroom city, that vanished like a fog with the first gales of autumn, street and steam cars dashed full speed, whistling to scare you before they crushed you flat; or tartanas creaked along, their red curtains flapping like banners of pure joy; or crowds of people pressed their way, with the murmur of many, many voices. It was the humming of a bee-hive, varied with the calling of vendors, the thrumming of guitars, the nasal screaming of accordions, the clack-clack of castañets, the wailing of hand organs, all the kinds of noise that men with smoothed hair and soft white shirts can dance to, after internal baths with anything but water and preparatory to the return to town for a slashing or boxing fray with the first innocent policeman they come across.

The people of the sea, beyond the drain, watched the gathering of this annual invasion with interested eyes, but without taking part in all its jollity. Let them enjoy themselves – if they were willing to pay for it! All that merry-making was the source of the Cabañal's pin-money, for the other seasons of the year.

On the first of August the Rector's boat was, you might say, done. And what a beauty she was, come now, tell the truth and don't be envious! The proud owner spoke of his creation much as a grand-daddy sizes up a new baby in his son's family. "The timber? Well, did you ever see solider beams than hers! And look at the finish on that mast! Not a cross grain to it from deck to point! A bit thick amidships! But I wanted her like that – handles rough water better. But just take a peep at that bow of hers! Sharp enough to cut paper with! Black along the scuppers, but with a shine like the patent leather shoe of a Grandee of Spain; and the body of her, white, but smooth as an eel, and just as fast, by God, in the water!" The rigging, the fishing gear and other trappings, were not yet aboard. But the best tackle makers along shore were at work on them, and by the fifteenth, the whole trousseau would be ready, and, pretty as a bride on the way to church, would she take the water! All this and more, the Rector was saying one evening to the circle of neighbors who, as usual, were sitting around his door.

He had invited his mother and his sister Roseta to supper that night. Dolores was at his side. Some distance away, with his rope-seated chair tilted back against an olive tree, and looking up at the moon through the branches in the dreamy pose of a chromo troubadour, sat Tonet, picking at the strings of a mandolin. On the walk in front some fish were frying on a little earthen stove. 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. From comely buxomness she had passed abruptly into old age, and the raw bluish light of the moon made evident that the hair on her head had thinned, leaving a scant network of taut gray locks over her sunburned scalp. The wrinkles now sank deep into her emaciated face while her cheeks hung loose and baggy, and her black eyes, once the talk of the whole shore, peered sad and faded from the folds of skin that drooped about them. Old long before her time, and from heartbreak, mostly, the spite and the worry that men had given her! And this she said with a nod in Tonet's direction, but with her thoughts, almost certainly, on the guardsman who had long before betrayed her. Besides, times had been getting harder and harder! What the tavern now brought in was nothing, practically. Roseta had had to go to work in the tobacco factory in town; and every morning, with her lunch-box on her arm, she went off along the highway to Valencia, joining the bands of pretty, bold-faced girls who marched with tapping heels and swishing skirts to sneeze all day in the snuff-laden air of the Old Customs House. And what a girl Roseta had grown to be! Roseta was just the name for her! When her mother, sometimes, looked at her out of the corners of her eyes, she seemed to see in her all the florid exuberance of the handsome siñor Martines.

Even now, while complaining that her daughter would have to take the long walk on winter mornings, she could not help feasting her eyes on that head of tangled golden hair out there under the olive tree, those dreamy sea-green eyes, that white skin that neither sun nor wind could darken, flecked now by the shadows of the branches which the moon outlined in arabesques of light and shade on the girl's face. Roseta, with her air of a maiden who knows all there is to know, kept looking from Dolores to Tonet and from Tonet to Dolores. At the fulsome praises that Pascualo kept showering upon his brother – for drifting away from the waster's life he had been leading to spend more and more of his time in that house where he found a peaceful, homelike kindliness he had never known in his own – the young half-sister smiled sarcastically. Oh, these men, these men! Just as she and mama had always said! Either scamps like Tonet, or puddingheads, like the Rector. Men! She would have none of them! And the Cabañal could never make out why she refused every boy who proposed to her! She would never have one of the wretched animals kicking around between her feet. She had taken well to heart all the curses she had heard her mother heap on men in her bitterest moments of despair down there in the loneliness and gloom of the tavern-boat.