I was included in this instruction so that I might protect the boy wherever he went. On our third raiding voyage aboard La Palazzina, when Cossa was ten years old (I was twenty-two, very big and strong, and as tall as any soldier in the crew), the ship we attacked, a Dutchman, had a company of fighting men waiting for us in its hold. They put up a bitter battle before, that prize was taken.

I stowed Cossa in a deck locker while the fighting swirled all over the ship. A swordsman backed me across the deck. As we fought, I tripped going backwards. He rushed in to kill me. I was in bad trouble. Cossa stepped out, struck a dagger into his back, had the coolness to pull it out, then stepped back into the locker: a classical exercise for a boy that young. He saved my life that day, and he would save it again. How much I wanted to be like him.

In 1379, when our education-at-war was as complete as a going business had the time to make it, his father told Cossa that he had been awarded an appointment to the University of Bologna to study law.

The molten sun bore down with heavy heat upon the shed which was the port captain's office on Procida when Cossa and I stood before the duke's table, myself two paces to the rear of Cossa. The duke said, in a voice like chains falling on stones, `Piero Tomacelli, Bishop of Santa Grazia di Traghetto, is our man in the Lateran palace. It was he who interceded with His Holiness Pope Urban to get you the appointment to Bologna. Over the years we have paid Tomacelli a lot of money to keep us well with the Church and to guide the throne of Naples to view our business benevolently.'

He smiled with that enormously pleasing family smile which burst out of the saturnity of Cossa faces to win anything they chose. The duke had a magnificent smile, but his teeth were old. Cossa's smile until he was an old man was a really beautiful thing to see. His teeth were perfect white and, even. It was said of Attila the Hun that he was one of the most charming men in history. Cossa's smile, in the same sense, seldom meant what it seemed to convey which was loving regard, open honesty and an entreaty for sincere friendship.