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.

"The mother is dead," said Ruggiero, "and, moreover, we have beaten Don
P