At the beginning of the story Salvatore was a fisher boy of fifteen “with a pleasant face, a laughing mouth and care-free eyes”. Naturally, he was quite skillful and effortless at swimming. He spent the mornings lying about the beach and was in and out of the sea all the time. When his father was working in his vineyard, his duty was to look after his two younger brothers. 

Salvatore acted as a nursemaid to his two younger brothers.

He called out to them when they went too far into the sea and dressed them up when it was time to go uphill for the mid-day meal. He was agile, happy and comfortable growing in the lap of nature.

He would throw himself into the deep water with a cry of delight.

Salvatore, as a boy from the traditional fishing community, had a life of a very common man. He never wore shoes except on Sundays to scramble up the hot sharp rocks oh his hard feet. The meal they had was ‘frugal’, as the narrator says. But the care he showed for his younger brothers was something that made him uncommon.
 
As a grown-up boy Salvatore was madly in love with a pretty girl who lived on the Grande Marina. He was passionate about their relationship and they were affianced before he joined the royal navy of King Victor Emmanuel.