“I know whom you love!” said ’Ntoni, with his hand on his hip.
“No, Cousin ’Ntoni, you don’t know; they have told you a lot of gossip without a word of truth in it. If ever you are passing my door, just you come in, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
“Now that the Mangiacarubbe has set her heart on Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, it will be a real mercy for his cousin Anna if anything comes of it,” said Cousin Venera.
’Ntoni went off in high feather, swaggering with his hand on his hip, followed by a train of friends, wishing that every day might be Sunday, that he might carry his pretty shirts out a-walking. That afternoon he amused himself by wrestling with Cousin Pizzuti, who hadn’t the fear of God before his eyes (though he had never been for a soldier), and sent him rolling on the ground before the tavern, with a bloody nose; but Rocco Spatu was stronger than ’Ntoni, and threw him down.
In short, ’Ntoni amused himself the whole day long; and while they were sitting chatting round the table in the evening, and his mother asked him all sorts of questions about one thing and another, and Mena looked at his cap, and his shirt with the stars, to see how they were made, and the boys, half asleep, gazed at him with all their eyes, his grandfather told him that he had found a place for him, by the day, on board Padron Fortunato Cipolla’s bark, at very good wages.
“I took him for charity,” said Padron Fortunato to whoever would listen to him, sitting on the bench in front of the barber’s shop. “I took him because I couldn’t bear to say no when Padron ’Ntoni came to ask me, under the elm, if I wanted men for the bark. I never have any need of men, but ‘in prison, in sickness, and in need one knows one’s friends’; with Padron ’Ntoni, too, who is so old that his wages are money thrown away.”.
“He’s old, but he knows his business,” replied, old Goosefoot. “His wages are by no means thrown away, and his grandson is a fellow that any one might be glad to get away from him—or from you, for that matter.”
“When Master Bastian has finished mending the Provvidenza we’ll get her to sea again, and then we sha’n’t need to go out by the day,” said Padron ’Ntoni.
In the morning, when he went to wake his grandson, it wanted two hours to dawn, and ’Ntoni would have preferred to remain under the blankets; when he came yawning out into the court, the Three Sticks were still high over Ognino, and the Puddara * shone on the other side, and all the stars glittered like the sparks under a frying-pan. “It’s the same thing over again as when I was a soldier and they beat the reveille on deck,” growled ’Ntoni. “It wasn’t worth while coming home, at this rate!”
“Hush,” said Alessio. “Grandpapa is out there getting ready the tackle; he’s been up an hour already,” but Alessio was a boy just like his father Bastiànazzo, rest his soul! Grandfather went about here and there in the court with his lantern; outside could be heard the people passing towards the sea, knocking at the doors as they passed to rouse their companions. All the same, when they came to the shore, where the stars were mirrored in the black smooth sea, which murmured softly on the stones, and saw here and there the lights of the other boats, ’Ntoni, too, felt his heart swell within him. “Ah,” he exclaimed, with a mighty stretch of his arms, “it is a fine thing to come back to one’s own home. This sea knows me.” And Pa-dron ’Ntoni said, “No fish can live out of water,” and “For the man who is born a fish the sea waits.”