"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.

"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."