VIII
THE COMING OF THE MAESTRA
AS the prao, its two wide outriggers spread out on each side like wings, its sail rising above straight and stiff like a backfin, skimmed over the whitecapped crests like a gigantic flying fish, the Maestro, his white suit gleaming in the sun, stood at the peak, erect and tense as a Viking of old. But he was madder than any Viking had ever been.
For three long days he had been on that prao, while it tacked and beat against a monsoon that was southern, although, according to the dictates of the almanac and the Maestro's own ardent desires, it should have been northern. For three days, trying to make Ilo-Ilo, thirty miles across the strait, the little craft, with its crew clinging like monkeys at the ends of the outriggers, had darted right and left like a startled and very dizzy gull, while from the rudimentary rudder, where sat the Maestro, there poured forth a stream of most piratical objurgations. Neither these spiritual pleas, however, nor the mad flurries of the flat-bottomed boat had prevailed against the wind's blustering stubbornness, and at length they
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