"We shall never see him again," said Ruggiero, stopping at last and
looking back over the stone wall he had just cleared.
Sebastiano listened intently. He was not tall enough to see over, but
his ears were sharp.
"I do not hear him any more," he answered. "I hurt my hands on his
nose," he added, thoughtfully, as he glanced at his bruised knuckles.
"So did I," returned his brother. "He will remember us. Come along--it
is far to Scalea."
"To Scalea? Are we going to Scalea?"
"Eh! If not, where? And where else can we eat? Don Antonino will give us
a piece of bread."
"There are figs here," suggested Sebastiano, looking up into the trees
around them.
"It has not rained yet, and if you eat figs from the tree before it has
rained you will have pain. But if we are very hungry we will eat them,
all the same."
Little Sebastiano yielded rather reluctantly before his brother's
superior wisdom. Besides, Padre Michele had given them a little cold
bean porridge at the monastery early in the morning. So they went on
their way cautiously, and looking about them at every step now that
there was no more need of haste. For they had got amongst the vineyards
and orchards where they had no business, and if the peasants saw them,
the stones would begin to fly. They knew their way about, however, and
reached an open footpath without any adventure, so that in half an hour
they were on the mule track to Scalea. They walked much faster than a
grown peasant would have done, and they knew the road. Instead of
turning to the left after going down the hill beyond the tower, they
took the right hand path to the Scalea river, and as it had not rained
they got across without getting very wet. But that road is not so good
as the one to Diamante, because the river is sometimes swollen, and
people with laden mules have to wait even as much as three days before
they can try the ford, and moreover there is bad air there, which
brings fever.
At last they struck the long beach and began to trudge through the sand.
"And what shall we do to-morrow?" asked Sebastiano.
Ruggiero was whistling loudly to show his younger brother that he was
not tired nor afraid of anything. At the question he stopped suddenly,
and faced the blazing blue sea.
"We can go to America," he said, after a moment's reflection.
Little Sebastiano did not seem at all surprised by the proposition, but
he remained in deep thought for some moments, stamping up a little
hillock of sand between his bare feet.
"We are not old enough to be married yet," he remarked at last.
"That is true," admitted Ruggiero, reluctantly.
Possibly, the close connection between going to America and being
married may not be apparent to the poor untutored foreign mind. It would
certainly not have been understood a hundred miles north of Sebastiano's
heap of sand. And yet it is very simple. In Calabria any strong young
fellow with a decently good character can find a wife with a small
dowry, though he be ever so penniless. Generally within a week, and
always within a fortnight, he emigrates alone, taking all his wife's
money with him and leaving her to work for her own living with her
parents. He goes to Buenos Ayres or Monte Video. If, at the end of four,
five or six years he has managed to increase the money so as to yield a
small income, and if his wife behaves herself during his absence, he
comes home again and buys a piece of land and builds a house. His
friends do not fail to inform him of his wife's conduct, and he holds
her dowry as a guarantee of her fidelity. But if he fails to enrich
himself, or if she is unfaithful to him, he never comes back at all. It
is thus clear that a penniless young man cannot go to America until he
is married.
"That is very true," Ruggiero repeated.
"And we must eat," said Sebastiano, who knew by experience the truth of
what he said.
"And we are always hungry. It is very strange. I am hungry now, and yet
we had the beans only this morning. It is true that the plate was not
full, and there were two of us. I wish we were like the son of Antonio,
who never eats. I heard his mother telling the chemist so last winter."
"He is dead," said Sebastiano. "Health to us!" he added, according to
custom.
"Health to us!" repeated Euggiero. "Perhaps he died because he did not
eat. Who knows? I should, I am sure. Is he dead? I did not know. Come
along! If Don Antonino is not away we shall get some bread."
So they trudged on through the sand. It was still very hot on the
yellowish white beach, under the great southern sun in September, but
the Children of the King had been used to bearing worse hardships than
heat, or cold either, and the thought of the big brown loaves in Don
Antonino's wine-shop was very cheering.
At last they reached the foot of the terraced village that rises with
its tiers of white and brown houses from the shore to the top of the
hill. Not so big nor so prosperous a place as Verbicaro, but much bigger
and richer than Diamante. There are always a good many fishing boats
hauled up on the beach, but you will not often see a cargo boat
excepting in the autumn. Don Antonino keeps the cook-shop and the wine
cellar in the little house facing the sea, before you turn to the right
to go up into the village. He is an old sailor and an honest fellow, and
comes from Massa, which is near Sorrento.
A vast old man he is, with keen, quiet grey eyes under heavy lids that
droop and slant outward like the lifts of a yard. He is thickset, heavy,
bulky in the girth, flat-footed, iron-handed, slow to move. He has a
white beard like a friar, and wears a worsted cap. His skin, having lost
at last the tan of thirty years, is like the rough side of light brown
sole leather--a sort of yellowish, grey, dead-leaf colour. He is very
deaf and therefore generally very silent. He has been boatswain on board
of many a good ship and there are few ports from Batum to San Francisco
where he has not cast anchor.
The boys saw him from a long way off, and their courage rose. He often
came to Verbicaro to buy wine and had known their father, and knew them.
He would certainly give them a piece of bread. As he saw them coming
his quiet eyes watched them, and followed them as they came up the
beach. But he did not turn his head, nor move hand or foot, even when
they were close to him. He looked so solid and determined to stand still
where he was, in the door of his shop, that you might have taken him for
an enormous lay figure of a man, made of carved oak and dressed up for a
sign to his own business. The two lads touched their ragged woollen caps
and stood looking at him, wondering whether he would ever move. At last
his grey eyes twinkled.
"Have you never seen a Christian before?" he inquired in a deep gruff
voice.
He did not seem to be in a good humour. The boys drew back somewhat in
awe, and sat down to rest on the stones by the wall. Still Antonino's
eyes followed them, though he did not move. Sebastiano looked up at him
uneasily from time to time, but Ruggiero gazed steadily at the sea with
the affectation of proud indifference to scrutiny, which is becoming in
a boy of twelve years. At last the old man stirred, turned slowly as on
a pivot and went into the shop.
"Is it not better to speak to him?" asked Sebastiano of his brother in
a whisper.
"No. He is deaf. If he did not understand us he would be angry and would
give us no bread."
Presently Don Antonino came out again. He held half a loaf and a big
slab of goat's-milk cheese between his huge thumb and finger. He paused
exactly on the spot where he had stood so long, and seemed about to
become absorbed in the contemplation of the empty fishing boats lying in
the sun. Sebastiano watched him with hungry eyes, but Ruggiero again
stared at the sea. After several minutes the old boatswain got under way
again and came to them, holding out the food to them both.
"Eat," he said laconically.
They both jumped up and thanked him, and pulled at their ragged caps
before they took the bread and cheese from his hand. He nodded gravely,
which was his way of explaining that he could not hear but that it was
all right, and then he watched them as they set to work.
"Like wolves," he said solemnly, as he looked on.
The place was quite deserted at that hour. Only now and then a woman
passed, with an earthen jar of water on her head and her little tin
bucket and rope in her hand. The public well is not fifty yards from
Antonino's house, up the brook and on the left of it. The breeze was
dying away and it was very hot, though the sun was already behind the
high rocks of the cape.
"Where are the beasts?" asked Don Antonino, as the boys swallowed their
last mouthful.
Ruggiero threw his head back and stuck out his chin, which signifies
negation in the south. He knew it was of little use to speak unless he
could get near the old man's ear and shout.
"And what are you doing here?" asked the latter.
Speech was now unavoidable. Ruggiero stood on tiptoe and the old man
bent over sideways, much as a heavily laden Dutch galliot heels to a
stiff breeze.
"The mother is dead!" bawled the boy in his high strong voice.
Oddly enough the tears came into his eyes for the first time, as he
shouted at the deaf old man, and at the same moment little Sebastiano's
lower lip trembled. Antonino shook his head in rough sympathy.
"We have also beaten Don Pietro Casale, and so we have run away," yelled
the boy.
Antonino grunted thoughtfully and his grey eyes twinkled as he slowly
righted himself and stood up again. Very deliberately he went into the
shop again and presently came back with a big measure of weak wine and
water.
"Drink," he said, holding out the jug.
Again the two boys pulled at their caps and each raised the jug
respectfully toward the old man before drinking.
"To health," each said, and Antonino nodded gravely.
Then Ruggiero took the jug inside and rinsed it, as he knew it was his
duty to do and set it on the table. When he came back he stood beside
his brother, waiting for Don Antonino to speak. A long silence followed.
"Sleep," said the old man. "Afterwards we will talk."
He took his old place in the doorway and stared steadily out to sea. The
boys lay down beside the house and having eaten and drunk their fill
and walked a matter of fifteen miles, were sound asleep in three
minutes.
At sunset Ruggiero sat up suddenly and rubbed his eyes. Don Antonino was
no longer at the door, and the sound of several men's voices came from
within, mingled with the occasional dull rattle of coarse glasses on
wooden tables.
"Ò!" Ruggiero called softly to his brother. Then he added a syllable and
called again, "O-è!" Little Sebastiano woke, sat up and looked about
him, rubbing his eyes in his turn.
"What has happened?" he inquired, only half awake.
"By the grace of God we have eaten, we have drunk and we have slept,"
said Ruggiero by way of answer.
Both got up, shook themselves and stood with their hands in their
pockets, looking at the sea. They were barefooted and barelegged, with
torn breeches, coarse white shirts much patched about the shoulders, and
ragged woollen caps. Presently they turned as by a common instinct and
went and stood before the open door, peering in at the guests. Don
Antonino was behind his black counter measuring wine. His wife was with
him now and helping him, a cheerful, clean woman having a fair
complexion, grey hair and round sharp eyes with red lids--a stranger in
Calabria like her husband. She held the neck of a great pear-shaped
demijohn, covered with straw, of which the lower part rested on the
counter. Antonino held a quart jug to be filled while she lowered the
mouth, and he poured the measure each time into a barrel through a black
tin funnel. They both counted the measures in audible tones, checking
each other as it were. The wine was very dark and strong and the smell
filled the low room and came out through the door. Half-a-dozen men sat
at the tables, mostly eating ship biscuit of their own and goat's-milk
cheese which they bought with their wine. They were rough-looking
fellows, generally in checked flannel shirts, and home-spun trousers.
But they all wore boots or shoes, which are in the south a distinctive
sign of a certain degree of prosperity. Most of them had black beards
and smart woollen caps. They were men who got their living principally
by the sea in one way or another, but none of them looked thorough
seamen. They talked loud and with a certain air of boasting, they were
rough, indeed, but not strongly built nor naturally easy in their
movements as sailors are. Their eyes were restless and fiery, but the
glance was neither keen nor direct. Altogether they contrasted oddly
with Don Antonino, the old boatswain. This part of Calabria does not
breed genuine sea folk.
Antonino took no notice of the boys as they stood outside the door, but
went quietly on with his work, measuring quart after quart of wine and
pouring it into the barrel.
"If it were a keg, I could carry it for him," said Ruggiero, "but I
cannot lift a barrel yet."
"We could roll it, together," suggested Sebastiano thoughtfully.
Presently Don Antonino finished his job and bunged the barrel with a
cork and a bit of old sailcloth. Then he looked up and stood still. The
boys were not quite sure whether he was watching them or not, for it was
already dusk. His wife lit a small German petroleum lamp and hung it in
the middle of the room, and then went to the fireplace in the dark
corner where something was cooking. One of the guests shouted to
Antonino.
"There is a martingane at San Nicola," he bawled.
Antonino turned his head slowly to the speaker and waited for more.
"Bound east," continued the man. "From Majuri."
"What is wrong with her?" inquired the old host.
Boats going west, that is, towards Naples and Civita Vecchia often put
in to the small natural harbours to wait for the night wind. Those going
east never do except for some especial reason.
The man said nothing, but fixed his eyes on Antonino and slowly filled
his pipe, evidently intending to convey some secret piece of information
by the look and action. But the old sailor's stolid face did not betray
the slightest intelligence. He turned away and deliberately took
half-a-dozen salted sprats from a keg behind the counter and laid them
in a dish preparatory to cleaning them for his own supper. The man who
had spoken to him seemed annoyed, but only shrugged his shoulders
impatiently and went on eating and drinking.
Antonino took a jug of water and went outside to wash his fish. The two
boys offered to do it for him, but he shook his head. He did not speak
until he had almost finished.
"We will fish to-night," he said at last, in a low voice, pouring a
final rinsing of water into the dish. "Sleep in the sand under the third
boat from the rocks. I will wake you when I am ready."
He looked from one to the other of the lads with a keen glance, and then
laid one huge finger against his lips. He drained the water from his
dish and went in again.
"Come along," said Ruggiero softly. "Let us find the boat and get out of
the way."
The craft was a small "gozzo," or fisherman's boat, not above a dozen or
fourteen feet long, sharp and much alike at bow and stern, but with a
high stem surmounted by a big ball of wood, very convenient for hanging
nets upon. It was almost dark by this time, but the boys saw that she
was black as compared with the other boats on both sides of her. She
was quite empty and lay high and dry on three low chocks. Ruggiero lay
down, getting as close to the keel as he could and Sebastiano followed
his example. They lay head to head so that they could talk in a whisper.
"Why are we not to speak of his fishing?" asked the younger boy.
"Who knows? But if we do as he tells us he will give us more bread
to-morrow."
"He is very good to us."
"Because we beat Don Pietro Casale. Don Pietro cheated him last year. I
saw the cottonseed oil he mixed with the good, in that load we brought
down."
"Perhaps the fishing is not for fish," suggested little Sebastiano,
curling himself up and laying his head on the end of the chock.
They did not know what time it was when Don Antonino gently stirred them
with his big foot. They sprang up wide awake and saw in the starlight
that he had a pair of oars and a coil of rope in his hands.
"As I launch her, take the chocks from behind and put them in front," he
said in a low voice.
Then he laid the oars softly in the bows and dropped the rope into the
bottom, and began to push the boat slowly down to the sea. The boys did
as he had told them to do, and in a few minutes the bows were in the
rippling water. The old sailor took off his shoes and stockings and put
them on board, and rolled up his trousers. Then with a strong push he
sent her down over the pebbles and got upon the bows as she floated out.
To look at his heavy form you would not have thought that he could move
so lightly and quickly when he pleased. In a moment he was standing over
the oars and backing to the beach again for the boys to get in. They
stood above their knees in the warm water and handed him the chocks
before they got on board. He nodded as though satisfied, but said
nothing as he pulled away towards the rocky point. The lads sat silently
in the stern, wondering whither he was taking them. He certainly had
brought no fishing tackle with him. There was not even a torch and
harpoon aboard for spearing the fish. He pulled rapidly and steadily as
though he were going on an errand and were in a hurry, keeping close
under the high rocks as soon as he was clear of the reefs at the cape.
At last, nearly an hour after starting, the boys made out a great
deserted tower just ahead. Then Antonino stopped pulling, unshipped his
oars one after the other and muffled them just where the strap works on
the thole-pin, by binding bits of sailcloth round them. He produced the
canvas and the rope-yarn from his pockets, and the boys watched his
quick, workmanlike movements without understanding what he was doing.
When he began to pull again the oars made no noise against the tholes,
and he dipped the blades gently into the water, as he pulled past the
tower into the sheltered bay beyond.
Then a vessel loomed up suddenly under the great cliffs, and a moment
later he was under her side, tapping softly against the planking. The
boys held their breath and watched him. Presently a dark head appeared
above the bulwarks and remained stationary for a while. Antonino stood
up in his boat so as to lessen the distance and make himself more easily
recognisable. Then a hand appeared beside the head and made a gesture,
then dived down and came up again with the end of a rope, lowering it
down into the boat. Antonino gave the line to Ruggiero and then stepped
off upon the great hook on the martingane's side to which the chain
links for beaching, got hold of the after shroud and swung himself on
board.
Now it may be as well to say here what a martingane is. She is a
good-sized, decked vessel, generally between five-and-twenty and a
hundred tons, with good beam and full bows, narrow at the stern and
rather high out of water unless very heavily laden. She has one stout
mast, cross-trees, and a light topmast. She has an enormous yard, much
longer than herself, on which is bent the high peaked mainsail. She
carries a gaff-top-sail, fore-staysail, jib and flying-jib, and can rig
out all sorts of light sails when she is before the wind. She is a good
sea boat, but slow and clumsy, and needs a strong crew to handle her.
The two boys who sat in the fishing boat alongside the martingane on
that dark night had no idea that all sea-going vessels were not called
ships; but there was something mysteriously attractive to them in the
black hull, the high tapering yard, and the shadowy rigging. They were
certainly not imaginative boys, but they could not help wondering where
the great dark thing had been and whither she might be going. They did
not know what going to sea meant, nor what real deep-sea vessels were
like, and they even fancied that this one might have been to America.
But they understood well enough that they were to make no noise, and
they kept their reflections to themselves, silently holding on to the
end of the rope as they sat in their places.
They did not wait very long. In a few minutes Antonino and the other man
came to the side, carrying an odd-looking black bundle, sewn up in what
Ruggiero felt was oiled canvas as he steadied it down into the stern of
the little boat, and neatly hitched round from end to end with
spun-yarn, so as to be about the shape of an enormous sausage. The two
men lowered it without much caution; it was heavy but rather limp. Then
came another exactly like the first, which they also lowered into the
boat, and a moment later Don Antonino came over the side as quickly and
noiselessly as he had gone up, and shoved off quietly into the
starlight.
Half an hour later he ran alongside of a narrow ledge of rock,
apparently quite inaccessible from the land above, but running up along
the cliff in such a way that, in case of danger from the sea, a man
could get well out of reach of the breakers. He went ashore, taking the
end of his own coil of rope with him. He made it fast in the dark
shadow, and he must have known the place very well, for there was but
one small hole running under a stone wedged in a cleft of the rock,
through which he could pass the line. He got back into the boat.
"Get ashore, boys," he said, "and wait here. If you see a revenue boat,
with coast guards in it, coming towards you as though the men wanted to
speak to you, cast off the end of the rope and let it run into the sea.
Then run up the ledge there, and climb the rock, the faster the better.
There is a way up. But keep out of sight when it is day, by lying flat
in the hollow there. If anybody else comes in a boat, and says nothing,
but just takes the rope, do not hinder him. Let him take it, and he will
take you too, and give you a couple of biscuits."
Don Antonino pushed off a little, letting the rope run out. Then he
made his end of it fast to the two ends of the black bundles, and
backing out as far as he could, he let them both down gently into the
water, and pulled away, leaving the Children of the King alone on the
ledge. He had managed to bring the rope down through the cleft, so that
it could not easily be seen from the sea. The boys waited some time
before either of them spoke, although the old fellow was deaf.
"Those things looked like dead men," said Sebastiano at last.
"But they are not," answered Ruggiero confidently. "Now I know why Don
Antonino is so rich. He smuggles tobacco."
"If we could smuggle tobacco, too, it would be a fortune," remarked the
younger boy. "He would give us bread every day, with cheese, and wine to
drink."
"We shall see."
They sat a long time, waiting for something to happen, and then fell
asleep, curling themselves up in the hollow as they had been told to do.
At dawn they awoke and began to look out for the revenue boat. But she
did not appear in sight. The hours were very long and it was very hot,
and they had nothing to eat or drink. Then all at once they saw what
seemed to them the most beautiful vision they could remember. A big
felucca shot round the rocks, still under way from the breeze she had
found in the little bay. Her full white sails still shivered in the sun,
and the boys could see the blue light that passed up under her keel and
was reflected upon her snow-white side as she ceased to move just in
front of them.
A big man with a red beard and a white shirt stood at the helm and fixed
his eyes on the point where the lads were hiding. He evidently saw them,
for he nodded to a man near him and gave an order. In a moment the dingy
was launched and a sailor came ashore. He jumped nimbly out, holding the
painter of his boat in one hand, glanced at the boys, who stood up as
soon as they saw that they were discovered, and cast off the end of the
rope, keeping hold of it lest it should run. Then without paying any
more attention to the boys, he went on board again taking the end with
him.
"And we?" shouted Ruggiero after him, as he pulled away facing them.
"I do not know you," he answered.
"But we know you and Don Antonino," said Sebastiano, who was
quick-witted.
"Wait a while," replied the sailor.
The man at the helm spoke to him while the others were hauling up the
bundles out of the water and getting them on board. The dingy came
rapidly back and the sailor sterned her to the rock for the boys to get
in. In a few minutes they were over the side of the felucca.[1] They
pulled at their ragged caps as they came up to the man at the helm, who
proved to be the master.
[Footnote 1: A felucca is a two-masted boat of great length in
proportion to her beam, and generally a very good sailer. She carries
two very large lateen sails, uncommonly high at the peak, and one jib.
She is sometimes quite open, sometimes half-decked, and sometimes fully
decked, according to her size. She carries generally from ten to thirty
tons of cargo, and is much used in the coasting trade, all the way from
Civita Vecchia to the Diamante. The model of a first-rate felucca is
very like that of a Viking's ship which was discovered not many years
since in a mound in Norway.]
"What do you want?" he asked roughly, but he looked them over from head
to foot, one at a time.
"The mother is dead," said Ruggiero, "and, moreover, we have beaten Don
Pietro Casale and run away from Verbicaro, and we wish to be sailors."
"Verbicaro?" repeated the master. "Land folk, then. Have you ever been
to sea?"
"No, but we are strong and can work."
"You may come with me to Sorrento. You will find work there. I am
short-handed. I daresay you are worth a biscuit apiece."
He spoke in the roughest tone imaginable, and his black eyes--for he had
black eyes and thick black hair in spite of his red beard--looked angry
and fiery while he talked. Altogether you would have thought that he was
in a very bad temper and not at all disposed to take a couple of
starving lads on board out of charity. But he did not look at all such a
man as those awkward, gaudily dressed, unsteady fellows the boys had
seen in Antonino's shop on the previous night. He looked a seaman, every
inch of him, and they instinctively felt that as he stood there at the
helm he knew his business thoroughly and could manage his craft as
coolly in a winter storm as on this flat September sea, when the men
were getting the sweeps out because there was not a breath of wind to
stir the sails.
"Go forward and pick beans for dinner," he said.
That was the first job given the Children of the King when they went to
sea. For to sea they went and turned out seamen in due time, as good as
the master who took them first, and perhaps a little better, though that
is saying much.
And so I have told you who the Children of the King are and how they
shipped as boys on board of a Sorrento felucca, being quite alone in the
world, and now I will tell you of some things which happened to them
afterwards, and not quite so long ago.