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.