Moran of the Lady Letty | Page 6

gray glove
was slit to the button. In front of him towered the enormous red-faced
man. A pungent reek of some kind of rancid fat or oil assailed his
nostrils. Over by Alcatraz a ferry-boat whistled for its slip as it elbowed
its way through the water.
Wilbur had himself fairly in hand by now. His wits were all about him;
but the situation was beyond him as yet.
"Git for'd," commanded the big man.
Wilbur drew himself up, angry in an instant. "Look here," he began,
"what's the meaning of this business? I know I've been drugged and
mishandled. I demand to be put ashore. Do you understand that?"
"Angel child," whimpered the big man. "Oh, you lilee of the vallee, you
bright an' mornin' star. I'm reely pained y'know, that your vally can't
come along, but we'll have your piano set up in the lazarette. It gives
me genuine grief, it do, to see you bein' obliged to put your lilee white
feet on this here vulgar an' dirtee deck. We'll have the Wilton carpet
down by to-morrer, so we will, my dear. Yah-h!" he suddenly broke out,
as his rage boiled over. "Git for'd, d'ye hear! I'm captain of this here
bathtub, an' that's all you need to know for a good while to come. I ain't
generally got to tell that to a man but once; but I'll stretch the point just
for love of you, angel child. Now, then, move!"
Wilbur stood motionless--puzzled beyond expression. No experience
he had ever been through helped in this situation.
"Look here," he began, "I--"
The captain knocked him down with a blow of one enormous fist upon
the mouth, and while he was yet stretched upon the deck kicked him
savagely in the stomach. Then he allowed him to rise, caught him by
the neck and the slack of his overcoat, and ran him forward to where a
hatchway, not two feet across, opened in the deck. Without ado, he
flung him down into the darkness below; and while Wilbur, dizzied by
the fall, sat on the floor at the foot of the vertical companion-ladder,
gazing about him with distended eyes, there rained down upon his head,
first an oilskin coat, then a sou'wester, a pair of oilskin breeches,
woolen socks, and a plug of tobacco. Above him, down the contracted
square of the hatch, came the bellowing of the Captain's voice:

"There's your fit-out, Mister Lilee of the Vallee, which the same our
dear friend Jim makes a present of and no charge, because he loves you
so. You're allowed two minutes to change, an' it is to be hoped as how
you won't force me to come for to assist."
It would have been interesting to have followed, step by step, the
mental process that now took place in Ross Wilbur's brain. The Captain
had given him two minutes in which to change. The time was short
enough, but even at that Wilbur changed more than his clothes during
the two minutes he was left to himself in the reekind dark of the
schooner's fo'castle. It was more than a change--it was a revolution.
What he made up his mind to do-- precisely what mental attitude he
decided to adopt, just what new niche he elected wherein to set his feet,
it is difficult to say. Only by results could the change be guessed at. He
went down the forward hatch at the toe of Kitchell's boot--silk-hatted,
melton- overcoated, patent-booted, and gloved in suedes. Two minutes
later there emerged upon the deck a figure in oilskins and a sou'wester.
There was blood upon the face of him and the grime of an unclean ship
upon his bare hands. It was Wilbur, and yet not Wilbur. In two minutes
he had been, in a way, born again. The only traces of his former self
were the patent-leather boots, still persistent in their gloss and shine,
that showed grim incongruity below the vast compass of the oilskin
breeches.
As Wilbur came on deck he saw the crew of the schooner hurrying
forward, six of them, Chinamen every one, in brown jeans and black
felt hats. On the quarterdeck stood the Captain, barking his orders.
"Consider the Lilee of the Vallee," bellowed the latter, as his eye fell
upon Wilbur the Transformed. "Clap on to that starboard windlass
brake, sonny."
Wilbur saw the Chinamen ranging themselves about what he guessed
was the windlass in the schooner's bow. He followed and took his place
among them, grasping one of the bars.
"Break down!" came the next order. Wilbur and the Chinamen obeyed,
bearing up and down upon the bars till the slack of the anchor-chain
came home and stretched taut and dripping from the hawse-holes.
"'Vast heavin'!"
And then as Wilbur