As the 4 men were examining their new feet, they suddenly felt strange.
They suddenly had an uncontrolled urge to take off their clothes, so they did. They stripped down to their birthday suits, naked as the day they were born.
Almost immediately, their legs and feet blended together, and they could no longer separate their legs. They had joined together and become as one.
"Oh me goodness!" Samuel exclaimed. "We be turning into merfolk!"
Indeed. The separation between their legs continued to close like a zipper and merge into a single column.
They watched as what had been their legs extended another full meter beyond where their feet should end, and fish tails unraveled themselves. Scales appeared along the tails, thousands of them, tinged different colours. And they felt their privates recede behind a flap of skin, so it looked as if they had never existed.
Johnny saw his hair, beard and all, change colour, from chestnut brown to seaweedy green, and grew to double its length, flowing over his shoulders, that had somehow or other become broad and muscular, like his chest.
The same hair colour change had happened to Horatio, Samuel and Percy.
And they all had different coloured tails:
Percy's tail was a pale blue.
Horatio's tail was a dark teal.
Johnny's tail was a dark green.
And Samuel's tail was a goldfish orange colour.
They were mermen.
Instinct told them where they belonged now, and they all slid into the sea.