hile 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