Captain Pickering must have heard him, for he said at once: "That's it, boy; put it on. What you need most is a new rig."
"Sam pulled it up," he said. "It's one of his fish."
"Fisherman's luck," laughed Captain Kroom, with a very deep, hearty laugh. "It's your share. Put it on."
Pete had eyed that suit until he knew every seam and button of it. Hour after hour during the cruise of the Elephant he had grown better and better acquainted with the strange idea that it was to be his own. He had hardly told himself how much more it must have cost than had any clothes he had ever owned before. "Guess I'll wait till I get home," he said.
"No, you don't," thundered Captain Kroom; "I want to see how you look in it. Put it on!"
Pete was pretty well accustomed to obeying the Captain, and not to do so now would have been something like mutiny on shipboard. He turned very red in the face, and he put on the trousers wrong side out the first trial, but then he got them right, and the blue shirt and the jacket followed.
"They fit him!" exclaimed Sam. "Make him look like another fellow."
So they all said, and it made little difference that Pete was still barefooted or that his straw hat turned up in front. It was an out-and-out sailor rig, and it had taken only a twinkling, or perhaps two or three twinklings, to get it on.
Meantime the Elephant had tacked to and fro, and Captain Kroom and Sam had kept their trolling-lines out. As for Captain Pickering, he had again opened his valise, and was now at work with his double-barrelled spy-glass, as Sam called it.