"Color of old Barnacles don't suit, eh? No, it don't, that's so. But I couldn't find no green an' white horse, Lank."
"Couldn't we paint him up a leetle, Cap'n?"
"By Sancho, I never thought of that!" exclaimed Captain Bean. "Course we can; git a string an' we'll strike a water-line on him."
With no more ado than as if the thing was quite usual, the preparations for carrying out this indignity were begun. Perhaps the victim thought it a new kind of grooming, for he made no protest. Half an hour later old Barnacles, from about the middle of his barrel down to his shoes, was painted a beautiful sea-green. Like some resplendent marine monster shone the lower half of him. It may have been a trifle bizarre, but, with the sun on the fresh paint, the effect was unmistakably striking. Besides, his color now matched that of the dory's with startling exactness.
"That's what I call real ship-shape," declared Captain Bean, viewing the result. "Got any more notions, Lank?"
"Strikes me we ought to ship a mast so's we could rig a sprit-sail in case the old horse should give out, Cap'n."
"We'll do it, Lank; fust rate idee!"
So a mast and sprit-sail were rigged in the dory. Also the lines were lengthened with rope, that the Captain might steer from the stern sheets.
"She's as fine a land-goin' craft as ever I see anywhere," said the Captain, which was certainly no extravagant statement.
How Captain Bean and his mate steered the equipage from Sculpin Point to the village, how they were cheered and hooted along the route, how they ran into the yard of the Metropolitan Livery Stable as a port of refuge, how the Captain escaped to the home of Widow Buckett, how the "splicin'" was accomplished—these are details which must be slighted.