“I’m in no humor for any such tomfoolery. Perhaps, between you all, you may manage to get up a snowstorm, or have an earthquake when we cross the Line.” “But wait, Rosy, I want to ask a favor.” The lady vanished, and was soon delving among lime-juice, guava jelly, apples, potted meats, and sundry other stores. There was something strangely incongruous in such a woman being addressed by so childish and undignified a name as Rosy, but her brother had so called her when scarcely able to toddle about, and now that he was thirty, she was “Rosy” still. Time was, when no craft of any description crossed the Equator without having all the landsmen on board introduced to the royal Neptune; but the good old custom has been gradually falling into disuse, and in this prosaic age the ceremony of “Crossing the Line” is rarely observed. Captain Pitkin decided that Fritz, the carpenter, should be metamorphosed into King Neptune—principally because he was large and massive, and had a long, thick beard. Fritz was an excellent carpenter, though his mental development was far from being on a par with his physical. However, he would look the part, and that was no small item. His majesty always comes aboard with an attendant, and here it was that Pitkin hit upon an original and brilliant idea. He had been humming an old song whose first verse runs: “’Twas Friday morn when we set sail, And we were not far from the land When the captain spied a lovely mermaid With a comb and a glass in her hand.” These words ran in his head some time, until he finally exclaimed: “Well, I’ll ‘spy a mermaid,’ too, though she may not be very lovely. Yes, a mermaid shall come aboard this bark to-day with Father Neptune.” He congratulated himself upon this happy thought and set about carrying it into execution. There was but one woman aboard—his sister—and her assuming the role of mermaid was, of course, not to be thought of. Among the crew was a bright, good-looking fellow, known as Mike—just the man to make an acceptable mermaid. In stature he was somewhat below the medium height, but well proportioned and with rather attractive features. He was much tanned, of course, and his expression was decidedly bolder than is thought pleasing in one of the fair sex; but these were minor difficulties in comparison with the great question, How to obtain suitable clothes? The captain solved this, as he thought, by deciding to ask his sister for the loan of some of her old skirts and waists, but she had buried herself in the store-room before he had time to prefer his request. This was just as well, he concluded, for in her present humor he would have met with a peremptory refusal.