seized her suddenly from behind, she laid him flat
with a well placed kick, tough as iron and sturdy as a main-mast though
he was.

She would have no love affairs, even if other women did! A man would
never touch the end of her little finger, no siree! The idea, besides! A
mother of two children, little angels, sleeping there behind one
thickness of boards--you could hear them breathe, even--and she alone in
the world to support them!

The future of the boys was beginning to cause the mother hours of
thought They had been growing up there, on the beach, like two baby
gulls, nesting in the shade of the grounded boats when the sun burned
hotly, or hunting conchas and periwinkles on the shore uncovered at low
tide, their brown chubby legs sinking deep into the masses of seaweed.
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.

Pascualet became a real mother to his younger brother. While _sina_ Tona
was busy with the tavern, during the earliest days which had been the
hard ones, the good-natured boy had carried the baby around with the
tenderness of a nurse and had played with the young torments of the
water front with that snarling squirming brat in his arms, who would
bite and scratch when anything did not suit him. At night, in the
cramped "stateroom" of the tavern-boat, "Tonet" would stretch out full
length in the most comfortable place, letting his fat brother curl up in
a corner where he might, provided he did not disturb the little devil,
who in spite of his smallness ruled his elder brother like a tyrant.

The two boys would fall asleep to the lullaby of the waves which on days
of spring-tide reached almost to the tavern; and in winter, when the
cold wind would try to make its way through the seams in the old boat's
walls, they would snuggle close together under the same coverlet. Some
nights they would be wakened by the uproar from the drunken sailors in
the tavern, and hear the angry words of their mother, or the slaps she
would rain on impudent cheeks. More than once the frail partition of
their bedroom had threatened to give way as some staggering body fell
against it. But then they would go