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Updated: May 21, 2025
There was something awful in the stillness under the enormous bluff, as Ruggiero gave the order to stop pulling and furl the sails, and he himself brought the skiff alongside by the painter, got in and kept her steady, laying his hand upon the gunwale of the larger boat. Bastianello stood up to help Beatrice and Teresina.
"It is this, Teresina," said Bastianello, summoning all his courage for what was the most difficult undertaking of his life. "You know my brother Ruggiero." "Eh! I should think so! I see him every day." "Good.
"It was not worth while," said Ruggiero to himself, "since you are to take another bath so soon." Then he looked at the sun and saw that it lacked half an hour of sunset, and he went to see that all was ready for the evening. He and Bastianello launched the old tub between them, and Ruggiero ballasted her with two heavy sacks of pebbles just amidships, where they would be under his feet.
If he betrayed this fact it would be hard hereafter to account for his own state, which was too apparent to be concealed, especially from his brother, and he had no idea that the latter loved the girl. "Why should you speak?" asked Bastianello, repeating the words, and stirring the ashes in his pipe with the point of his knife. "Because if you do not speak you will never get anything."
Ruggiero looked at him curiously, but was far too much preoccupied with his own thoughts to guess what the matter was. He turned away and went towards the fire where the Gull was already tasting a slippery string of the macaroni to find out whether it were enough cooked. Bastianello shrugged his shoulders and followed him in silence.
"The truth is this," answered Teresina, lowering her voice. "They have betrothed her to the Count, and she does not like it. But if you say anything ." She laughed a little and shook her finger at him. Bastianello threw his head back to signify that he would not repeat what he had heard. Then he gazed into Teresina's eyes for a moment. "The Count is worse than an animal," he said quietly.
He had in him some of that red old blood that does not stop for trifles such as life and death when the hour of passion burns, and the brain reels with overmastering love. And Bastianello was not in a much better case, though his was less hard to bear.
On the next day and the day after that he was at work before dawn with Bastianello, and Black Rag was very much surprised at the trim appearance of his old boat when the brothers at last put her into the water and pulled themselves round the little harbour to see whether the seams were all tight.
While she was bathing Bastianello and Teresina sat together behind the bathing-house, but Ruggiero retired respectfully to a distance and busied himself with giving his little boat a final washing, mopping out the water with an old sponge, which he passed again and again over each spot, as though never satisfied with the result.
In an instant Bastianello produced a decanter out of a bucket of snow and brought it aft with a glass. The Marchesa smiled. "You do things very well, dearest friend," she said, and moistened her lips in the cold liquid. "Donna Beatrice has had more to do with providing for your comfort than I," answered the Count.
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