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