“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.

CHAPTER III.

Ten years have passed since the ever-memorable day on which the Children of the King hurt their fists so badly in battering Don Pietro Casale’s sharp nose.  They are big, bony men, now, with strongly marked features, short yellow hair and fair beards.  So far they are alike, and at first sight might be taken for twin brothers.  But there is a marked difference between them in character, which shows itself in their faces.  Ruggiero’s eye is of a colder blue, is less mobile and of harder expression than Sebastiano’s.  His firm lips are generally tightly closed, and his square chin is bolder than his brother’s.  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.