“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.