]
"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.
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