He is stronger, too, though not by
very much, and though he is more silent and usually more equable, he has
by far the worse temper of the two. At sea there is little to choose
between them. Perhaps, on the whole, Sebastiano has always been the
favourite amongst his companions, while Ruggiero has been thought the
more responsible and possibly the more dangerous in a quarrel. Both,
however, have acquired an extraordinarily good reputation as seamen, and
also as boatmen on the pleasure craft of all sizes which sail the gulf
of Naples during the summer season.
They have made several long voyages, too. They have been to New York and
to Buenos Ayres and have seen many ports of Europe and America, and much
weather of all sorts north and south of the Line. They have known what
it is to be short of victuals five hundred miles from land with contrary
winds; they have experienced the delights of a summer at New Orleans,
waiting for a cargo and being eaten alive by mosquitoes; they have
looked up, in January, at the ice-sheeted rigging, when boiling water
froze upon the shrouds and ratlines, and the captain said that no man
could lay out upon the top-sail yard, though the north-easter threatened
to blow the sail out of the bolt-ropes--but Ruggiero got hold of the lee
earing all the same and Sebastiano followed him, and the captain swore a
strange oath in the Italo-American language, and went aloft himself to
help light the sail out to windward, being still a young man and not
liking to be beaten by a couple of beardless boys, as the two were
then.
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