“‘Hello, here! what you been changing her color for? Don’t you know black’s the color of this line?’
“‘Haven’t changed her color,’ said I.
“‘Look at her,’ said he.
“Well, sir, I looked over the side, and bless my weather binnacles if the ship wasn’t a bright lead color. That was strange, you know, considering that we’d left port black. I jumped ashore and rubbed my hand over her, and she was smooth as—well, smooth as Clark’s bald head there. There wasn’t a particle of paint on her; she’d come so fast it was all stripped off, and the water had polished her steel plates till they shone like a new quarter.
“That made her very handsome, but the owners didn’t like it because they had to dock her to be painted.”
“She must have made a record that voyage, sir,” Kit suggested.
“Oh, that was only the beginning of it,” the Captain went on, with a wink at the purser. “When we started out again and got down off Hatteras we met a Dutch bark towing the biggest sea-serpent you ever saw. Whether it was a sea-serpent or a whale they couldn’t quite make out; but it was about 375 feet long and 35 or 40 feet through. They’d had it two or three days, and they declared it bellowed all night long, though that part I wouldn’t ask anybody to believe.
“I suspected something the minute I saw it, so I went aboard the bark and said, said I:—
“‘I think that’s my property you’ve got there.’
“‘Guess not,’ said the skipper.