Lola grabbed up her shawl. In the doorway she paused a moment. "I'm going to get David!"
Catherine heard her faintly.
Antonia moved to her side. She seized Lola's wrist. "Are you mad?" she cried, in a whisper.
"No!" Lola came back. "She needs him."
"Madre de Diosi" Antonia muttered. "You'd bring death to him and you! You are mad!" She held Lola's wrist hard, pulling her.
Lola wrenched away from her. Tina's voice stopped her. "Fetch the priest, señorita," she said. "Go fetch the priest!"
Antonia dropped her hand, as she was about to seize Lola again. Lola stood still, just for a second. Then, with a quick stifled cry, she threw her shawl over her head, pulled it around her shoulders. Her light, running footsteps grew fainter and fainter.
Three hours later Catherine's baby was born. Antonia took the child, and bathed it, and dressed it in the clothes Catherine had made. She came back into the room with the baby in her arms, and Tina did not even look up. Tina was not concerned with the baby; she knew Catherine was going to die.
The priest knelt by the side of the bed. Lola knelt beside him, her fingers clutched over her beads.
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"She is bleeding to death," Tina whispered to Antonia. "I cannot staunch the flow of blood." She reached under the sheet to feel the soaked linen she had wrapped around Catherine in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding.
Suddenly Catherine opened her eyes.
"It is all over," she said.
"Si," said the priest. "You have had a little girl."
Catherine smiled. "Bless her, Padre." Then she whispered, "And christen her Elizabeth. Then he can call her Bess."
Lola had wiped her face on her skirt. Her huge eyes were dark and full of desperate appeal. Antonia said, "Would you like to see your daughter?"
Catherine did not answer.
Antonia held the baby up, and Catherine moved her hand to show Antonia she wanted the baby. Gently, biting her lip, Antonia laid the baby down beside its mother, tucking the sheet in around both the child and the mother.
Catherine saw Tina's face hovering above her. She remembered telling Tina she had forgotten how bad the pain was. Now she said, "I had forgot how wonderful it was to have a baby, too."
Her eyes closed. The priest took her hand. The baby slept.
Tina brought little Kate into the room. Kate's green eyes looked at her mother.
"She sleeps, Tina?" Kate asked, very softly.
"Si, my own," Tina said.
"And the baby sleeps, too," Kate said. "I thought the baby would be bigger."
"No. Babies are very small."
"I will take care of her," Kate said. "I am big."
The priest drew her into the circle of his arm. Kate watched her mother.
Lola lifted her head. She reached forward to touch Catherine's hand as it lay against the sheet. "Oh, Tina," she whispered, "does she know she is going to die?"
"No," said Tina.
After a little while Catherine's eyes opened again. She looked at the baby. The baby's head was dark.
"She has his hair," Catherine said, suddenly. Then she saw Kate.
Kate said, "You were asleep when I came in."
"Darling," Catherine whispered. "Do you like the baby?" She paused; she wanted to ask a question. "Are her eyes blue?"
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"Si, Catherine," said Lola.
The faintest frown crossed Catherine's face. "But all babies' eyes are blue." She would have to wait a few months before she would really know whether her child would have its father's blue eyes. "I shall have to wait, again," she said.
Lola hardly heard her. She held Catherine's hand. The priest took Kate from the room and returned alone.
He and Lola and Antonia stayed with Catherine, even after her light breath stopped.
The women prayed, with the priest; the baby slept. Finally the priest lifted the child from its place beside Catherine, and laid it in Lola's arms.
"Your duty is to the child," he said. He covered Catherine with a clean sheet Tina had brought. "You are needed," he said. "And the señora's other child."
He blessed the baby, while Lola held it. When the baby's eyes opened, and Lola saw the clear blue eyes, her slight shoulders shook with sobs. When the priest was finished, she could wait no longer to ask the question.
"Why, Padre?" she cried desperately. "Tell me why!"
"I do not know," he said.
"You should!" Lola said. "If you do not know, who can tell me?"
"Only yourself," he said gently. "I am going now to the child. Ask yourself, daughter, whether she does not need me more than you.
Antonia said, "You'll not leave us, Father?"
He said, "Not yet, and I shall come back this evening, my daughter. To stay with you. And I want to help with the arrangements to have these two children returned to Spain with Lola and the Filipino woman. I shall see the Captain of the Concepcion."
"Oh, gracias, Padre," Antonia gasped out.
He put his hand on her shoulder. "I shall be back," he said. His bony feet stuck out from under his swinging robes, his head was bent a little as he walked away. Lola took the baby into the room where the cradle was. But she didn't put the child down; she held the baby close.
In Catherine's room, Antonia moved about silently, with Tina. They carried the stained linen from the room, and Antonia lighted four candles to burn at each corner of the white-shrouded bed.
"I am going to brush and comb her hair, señora," Tina said. "Would you want to leave me?"
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"No," said Antonia. "I am not afraid of Catherine." Her foot struck a soft impediment, and she reached down, her eyes so full of tears that she could hardly see. Her fingers tore the roll of canvas. She picked up the picture, and she unrolled it a little to see the top of a dark head, touched with silver, and a pair of blue eyes. Antonia rolled the picture up again and put it away.
PART FOUR
Chapter XXXVI
The Desire tossed helplessly on a still troubled sea. the wind had shifted to the northwest, but the great mass of water that had endured the wind tumbled from the northeast; the wind took the crests of the waves and flung them high in the air for the pale sun to shine through. Master Fuller kept the Desire's bow into the wind, and the waves slapped her sides; her decks were wet and slippery.
But the hatches were already thrown open to the sun and air, and curls of smoke came from the galley stoves. The ship was very still.
Some of the men were sleeping, Tyler among them. Cavendish was shaving and getting dry clothes on, and Master Pretty was readying himself for the first watch. His face was grim and hopeless. Before he left his cabin, he sat down for a moment and wrote in the log he kept.
"We suffered a terrible tempest," he wrote, baldly, "which carried away the most part of our sails." He closed the book and went up on deck. The Captain was waiting for him.
"Call all hands, Master Pretty," Cavendish said.
"Aye, aye, sir," said Master Pretty, his voice lagging. He went off slowly, throwing a look upward at the bare mainmast. Tatters of sail clung to the yards, the wind blew them raggedly; the Desire was carrying her lateen mizzen, but Pretty could see that it would not last in any kind of stiff wind.
Cavendish paced the poopdeck as he waited. He was wearing a clean shirt, and a leather sea jacket; the spray flew up even to this high deck. The sun felt good on his face and he paced on restlessly, for he was so weary that he must keep walking to stay awake.
The crew who assembled before him were wear)' too, after the night of tempest. Their faces were drawn and tired, yet they came quickly enough, they knew that what he had to say was important.
They had no sails. They were leagues from any land, and they