They all set to work with a good will, and before four o’clock that day the two boats were launched, ballasted and rigged, the sails were bent to the yards and the brasses polished, so that Ruggiero and Sebastiano went up to their respective masters to ask if there were any orders for the afternoon.

CHAPTER IV.

Ruggiero found out before long that his master for the summer was eccentric in his habits, judging from the Sorrentine point of view in regard to order and punctuality.  Ruggiero’s experience of fine gentlemen was limited indeed, but he could not believe that they all behaved like San Miniato, whose temper was apparently as changeable as his tastes.  Sometimes he went to bed at nine o’clock and rose at dawn.  Sometimes on the other hand he got up at seven in the evening and went to bed by daylight.  Sometimes everything Ruggiero did was right, and sometimes everything was wrong.  There were days when the Count could not be induced to move from the Marchesa di Mola’s terrace between noon and midnight or later, and again there were days when he went off in his boat in the morning and did not return until the last stragglers on the terrace of the hotel were ready to go to bed.  He was irregular even in playing, which was after all his chief pastime.  Possibly he knew of reasons why it should be good to gamble on one day and not upon another.  Then he had his fits of amateur seamanship, when he would insist upon taking the tiller from Ruggiero’s hand.  The latter, on such occasions, remained perched upon the stern in case of an emergency.  San Miniato was a thorough landsman and never understood why the wind always seemed to change, or die away, or do something unexpected so soon as he began to steer the boat.  From time to time Ruggiero, by way of a mild hint, held up his palm to the breeze, but San Miniato did not know what the action meant.  Ruggiero trimmed the sails to suit the course chosen by his master as well as possible, but straightway the boat was up in the wind again if she had been going free, or was falling off if the tacks were down and the sheets well aft.  San Miniato was one of those men who seem quite incapable of doing anything sensible from the moment they leave the land till they touch it again, when their normal common sense returns, and they once more become human beings.

On the other hand nothing frightened him, though he could not swim a stroke.  More than once Ruggiero allowed him almost to upset the boat in a squall, and more than once, when, steering himself, and when there was a fresh breeze, drove her till the seas broke over the bows, and the green water came in over the lee gunwale—­just to see whether the Count would change colour.  In this, however, he was disappointed.  San Miniato’s temper might change and his tastes might be as variable as the moon, or the weather, but his face rarely expressed anything of what he felt, and if he felt anything