“There must be a good many, sir.”
Half a dozen equally absurd questions followed, most of which the wisdom of Minerva could not have answered correctly.
“Enough; away with him to the shaving-chair!” finally cried Neptune. “He’s the most unpromising subject we ever came across, and calls me ‘sir,’ instead of ‘your majesty!’”
An old steamer chair had been tilted back, and the victim—for such he now considered himself—was marched to it, and requested to sit down. Behind this chair stood a large wash-tub filled with water, but the tarpaulin spread over it concealed this fact.
The Mermaid now produced a tar-pot, in which she swished a brush about until the “lather” was of the right consistency. A piece of sacking having been spread over the occupant of the chair, the operator brandished her brush and prepared to begin.
“I don’t need to—to be shaved,” gasped Christian.
This was true, for he was one of those men—mostly Finns and Scandinavians—who couldn’t have raised a beard had his life depended on it. A few colorless hairs appeared on his cheeks and upper lip, which the Mermaid proceeded to count aloud.
“Twenty-nine!” she announced, contemptuously. “Rather different, father dear, from the visages of Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco de Gama, upon whom I operated in centuries gone by.”
She now lathered the face of the squirming Christian, laying on the tar with the peculiar slapping sound made by an experienced painter when applying a coat of paint to a flat surface.
The patient had by this time resigned all hope, and betrayed little interest when the brush was laid aside for the razor. This was a marline-spike, and the Mermaid gave it an edge—if a round object can be said to have an edge—by stropping it on a capstan bar which one of the crew had placed in the capstan. She then held the cracked hand-glass before Christian’s face, that he might see how he looked, and proceeded to shave him. This was a decided relief, and the man wondered if it was not the end of the performance.