Strongly built, they started life as porters. Like beasts of burden, they were harnessed to a cart the whole of the long summer days, or else they helped to unload the ships that came in port.
Having managed to scrape a little money together, they began to trade on their own account. They imported from Dalmatia, wine, sardines, carobs, and _castradina_, or smoked mutton; they exported cotton goods. They got to be shareholders, and then owners, of a bark, a _trabacolo_. The times were good; there was, as yet, little or no competition; therefore money begot money, and, though they could neither read nor write, still they soon found themselves the owners of a sum of money which--to them--was unlimited wealth. Had they remained in Trieste, they might have got to be millionaires, but they loved their birthplace even more than they did riches.
Once again in Budua, they added a good many acres of vineyards and of olive-trees to their paternal farms, and, from that time, they lived there in all the contentment this world can afford. They married, but, strange to say, they were not blessed with many children; each of them had only one son. Janko's son was, after his friend, named Milenko; the other infant was christened Uros.
These two children are the _pobratim_ of our story.
"But what is the meaning of this strange word?" you ask.
Have but a little patience, and it will be explained to you in due time.
Uros and Milenko had inherited with their blood that friendship which had bound their fathers and forefathers before them. As children, they belonged to either mother, and they often slept together in the same trough-like cradle scooped out of the trunk of a tree; they ate out of the same _zdila_--the huge wooden porringer which served the family as table dish and plates; they drank out of the same _bukara_, or wooden bottle, for, being rich and having vineyards of their own, wine was never wanting at their meals.
At fourteen they, like their fathers, went off to sea, for lads must know something of the world. Happily, however, they both came back to Budua after a cruise of some months. Though they met with many squalls, still they never came to any grief.
As a rule they staid away cruising about the Adriatic and the Levant from November to the month of August; but when the harvest-time drew nigh, they returned home, where hands were wanted to reap and garner such fruits as the rich soil had yielded. After the vintage was over and the olives gathered, the earth was left bare; then they set off with the swallows, though not always for warmer climes. It was the time when sudden gales blow fiercely, when the crested waves begin to roll and the sea is most stormy.