ould draw a seine in a full gale. He had
never thought once of danger in the worst of weather. But now, in his
loneliness, he was filled with all manner of forebodings. How was this
venture going to turn out? What a responsibility to be in charge of
one's own enterprise! Would the old hulk hold together if a storm struck
her? Supposing they were caught on the way back with a full load! And he
sat on, listening to the agonized moans that came from the _Garbosa's_
joints, as she took the seas, or looking up at the throats of the giant
bellying canvas which, as it swayed to and fro, seemed to be scraping
the sky with the point of the mast.

But the night wore on uneventfully, and the dawn came, with a flock of
red clouds, and as hot as a mid-summer's morning. The sail now kept
flapping like the wing of a great bird in lazy flight. The wind was
coming in barely perceptible gusts that tickled the surface of the
burnished, prostrate sea, as blue as a Venetian mirror. The mainland was
completely down. Away off to port some pink blotches, hardly
distinguishable from the mist of sunrise, vaguely dimmed the horizon
line. "That's Ibiza off there!" Tonet called to his companions. Slowly
the _Garbosa_ crept along over the tranquil, circular immensity, beyond
whose rim black lines could occasionally be seen--the smoke of distant
steamers. A bare ripple under the vessel's bows marked her virtual
immobility. The sail hung lifeless from the mast, sweeping back over the
deck at times as a capricious zephyr headed the course. Looking down
over the sides, the eye plunged deep into the blue waters, where the
sky, the clouds and the boat were mirrored in bottomless mystery.
Schools of fish darted by underneath, shining like bits of tin. Dolphins
were playing about on the surface close at hand, showing their absurd
muzzles and their black sides sprinkled with diamond dust. Flying fish,
the butterflies of the sea, came up, flitted along for a distance, and
then sank again into the depths. Strange beings of fantastic shapes and
indescribable colors, some gayly striped like tigers, others in mournful
black, some huge and chubby, others small and wiry, some with cavernous
mouths and tiny bellies, others with enormous bodies and ridiculous
little snouts, swarmed around the old boat, as though the _Garbosa_ were
one of those mythological craft that used to lead processionals of
marine divinities.

Tonet and the two sailors were taking advantage of