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

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Blasco Ibáñez Vicente. Mayflower (Flor de mayo): A Tale of the Valencian Seashore

CHAPTER I. THE WIDOW'S TAVERN

CHAPTER II. SIÑÁ TONA'S FAMILY

CHAPTER III. A FAMILY ENTERPRISE

CHAPTER IV. MARY AND JESUS MEET

CHAPTER V. TWO WOMEN QUARREL

CHAPTER VI. THE SMUGGLERS

CHAPTER VII. THE NAMING OF THE BOAT

CHAPTER VIII. THE MAYFLOWER PUTS TO SEA

CHAPTER IX "PROOFS! PROOFS! ROSARIO!"

CHAPTER X "AND STILL THEY SAY FISH COMES HIGH!"

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And the years rolled on with nothing further to disturb the monotonous course of life for the family sheltered in the tavern-boat. The Rector had grown up to be a lusty sailor, stingy of words, fearless in danger. From gato de barca he had graduated to the rank of able-bodied seaman and was the man of the crew on whom tio Borrasca most relied. Every month Pascualet handed four or five duros over to his mother to keep for him.

Tonet was not settling down to any trade. A stubborn fight was going on between him and his mother. 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. Then he tried his hand at coopering, the steadiest of all trades; but his boss bounced him to the sidewalk in a very few days. Then he joined a stevedore's colla in town; but he never worked unloading the steamers more than two days a week, and that much quite against his will.

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A strange exotic perfume seemed to come from the four pages of rough paper – a suggestion of trees and flowers the poor women did not know, of tempestuous seas, of shores draped in rosy mists under skies of fire, of Cuban negroes and Philippine Chinese, or of great cities of South America. What a boy, eh? What a lot he would have to talk about when he came home! Perhaps that crazy idea he had had of going away to see the world would be the making of him in the end. 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.

Whenever Pascualet went out now, it was on shares with the skipper of his boat; and he had his secrets with tio Mariano, the important individual whom Tona fell back on in all her plights. The boy was making money, I'll bet you, and siñá Tona was hurt to the quick that he never brought a cent home any longer, and, indeed, now called at the tavern-boat, and sat a moment or two under the shelter outside, more for appearance's sake than anything else. He was saving his earnings, then! Well, who was keeping the money for him! Dolores! Dolores, of course, that witch who had given love-philters to both her boys – otherwise, why were they always following round after her as if they didn't dare say their soul was their own?

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