ook out! Look out!"

Now the death blows were beginning to come.

A wave of gray water, noiseless, and without a cap, reared above the
stern, came full aboard without breaking, covered the whole boat,
sweeping over her like a cuff from a gigantic hand. The Rector received
the shock square on the back, but nothing, apparently, could loosen his
iron grip from the tiller, nor pry his feet from the deck against which
they were braced. He felt the water get deeper and deeper above his
head, and a terrible groaning as if the boat were going to pieces under
the strain. Then, as he came to the surface, an object, driven along by
the wave like a cannonball, just grazed him.

It was the water-cask. The great roller had torn it from its frame, and
was hurling it along the deck, crushing everything before it. It brushed
Pascualet in the face, and blood spurted from the boy's nostrils. Then,
like a giant sledge-hammer, it hurtled forward toward the foot of the
mast where _tio_ Batiste and the two sailors were. It was all as
instantaneous as it was terrible. There was a cry. In spite of his
courage in the face of terror, Pascualo could not stand this horrifying
sight. With a groan of agony he buried his face in his hands. Like a
mighty catapult, the barrel caught the youngest of the sailors on the
head, and crushed him to pulp against the mast; and then, like an
assassin running away with blood streaming from his hands, the heavy keg
rolled into the scupper and overboard. Eddies of water coming along the
deck, swept the mangled headless torso against the hands and faces of
the other men, and washed blood and bits of flesh around over the
planking.

_Tio_ Batiste, his faltering lament sounding faintly through the storm,
began to protest despairingly. God, could it not soon be over! Why
torment honest sailors so? They had done no harm! "Let her go, Pascualo,
let her go, for God's sake! Our time has come! Why fight and make us
suffer so long?" But the Rector was not listening. His eyes were on the
mast, where he remembered hearing that terrible groaning sound, when he
was under water. And, in fact, the pole had been fractured and was
leaning alarmingly. At the peak he could still see the sheaf of grass
that had been hung up there for the christening and the bunch of dry
flowers that the hurricane was whipping about at the end of one last
strand. "_Pare!_ _Pare!_" Pascualet, his face covered with blood and
terrified at the catastroph