"You don't mean to say, sir, that you want me to take it off," he remarked, as if he had not heard aright.
"That's exactly what I do mean," I replied. "I want it out of the way."
He thereupon took up his scissors and began his work of destruction, but in a half-hearted fashion. When he had finished I sat up and looked at myself in the glass. You may believe me or not, when I tell you that I scarcely recognized the face I saw there.
"If I were to meet you in the street, my lad, I should pass you by," I said to myself. Then to the barber I added: "What a change it makes in my appearance."
"It makes you look a different man, sir," the barber replied. "There's not many gentlemen would have sacrificed a nice moustache like that."
I paid him, and, when I left the shop, went to my cabin. Once there, I unlocked my trunk, and took from it a smart yachting cap and a leather case, containing various articles I had purchased in London. One of these was an eye-glass, which, after several attempts, I managed to fix in my eye. Then, striking an attitude, I regarded myself in the mirror above the washstand.
"Good-day, Mr. George Trevelyan," I muttered. "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance."
"Really, bah Jove, that's awfully good of you to say so," I answered in my assumed voice. "I hope, bah Jove, we shall be very good friends for the time that we're destined to spend together."
"That will only be until we get back to Barbadoes," Dick Helmsworth replied. "After that, Mr. George Trevelyan, you can clear out as soon as you please. From that day forward I shall hope never to set eyes on you again."
I thereupon placed the eye-glass in its case, put the cap back in the trunk, and relocked the latter. After that I went on deck to receive the chaff I knew would be showered upon me by my fellow-passengers.