Slops’ eyes nearly popped out of his sallow face, but he claimed that he didn’t believe it.
When Father and the mate left the table and went on deck, Slops came to me.
“Does the Old Man mean that stuff about us going too fast when we cross the Equator?” he asked.
“Sure he does, and what’s more, Neptune knows you’ve never crossed the line before, and you’re going to be tarred and feathered,” I promised him. “Besides that, you’ll probably have to clean up all the mess they make tarring and feathering you.”
Slops didn’t think so much of me at that moment, and he turned back to his pantry with a sniff. An hour later Father asked me where Slops had disappeared to. I didn’t know, but I set about to find him. I looked in the pantry, in his cabin, up in the galley, under the fo’c’s’lehead, aloft in the rigging, down in the lazarette, everywhere, so I thought, and I couldn’t track him. We were just about to cross the Equator, and Slops’ presence was desired on deck for the initiation. Mr. Swanson stepped up to my father!
“Come with me, Captain, and I’ll show you where that cat-livered cabin-boy is.” I went with them, forward, and there we found Slops. He was leaning far out the hawse hole staring at the water below looking for the Equator! The mate planted his foot in the hind part of the cabin-boy and nearly sent him hurling into space through the hawse hole.
“Get amidships, you so and so ignoramus.” Poor Slops, quaking with fear, ambled aft. There on the mizzen hatch he saw a platform built of timber on which was a big wooden tub of “shaving lather.” The sailors were sitting around the tub on their haunches with treacherous innocence on their faces.
“Tie up the beggar,” ordered Swede, who had assumed charge of the activities. Slops was grabbed by Bulgar and McLean and bound hand and foot with rope. For a moment there was an ominous pause, and then slowly coming down off the fo’c’s’le head was old Neptune himself. One of the sailors had rigged himself up in a torn gunny sack, with long, straggly beard made of rope yarn and he carried a trident. It is the custom for the Captain of the ship to turn over all authority to Neptune when crossing the Line. Neptune took his stand on the wooden platform. He called for silence, and then his voice boomed out,
“Where is the son of a bitch that dares trespass my Equator without his passport?”
McLean and Swede shoved Slops in front of Neptune.