The Belted Seas | Page 9

menagerie, and down she comes on the Helen Mar, and up goes the _Helen Mar_ climbing through the foam. Me, I hung on to the capstan.
The next thing I knew we were shooting past the upper town, up the valley of the Jiron, and there wasn't any lower town to be seen. We were bound for the Andes. The crest of the wave was a few rods ahead, and the air was full of spray. I saw the Sarasara too, having a nice time spitting things out of her mouth, and it looked to me like she waggled her head with the fun she was having. But the _Helen Mar_ was having no fun, nor me, nor Stevey Todd.
It was four miles the Helen Mar went in a few minutes, going slower toward the end. By-and-by she hit bottom, and keeled over against a bunch of old fruit trees on the bank of the river, and lay still, or only swayed a little, the water swashing in her hold. Right ahead were the foothills of the Cordilleras, and the gorge where the Jiron came down, and where the mule path came down beside the river. The big wave went up to the foot of the hills, and now it came back peaceful. Then it was quiet everywhere, except for the sobbing of the ebb among the tree trunks, and afterward lower down in the bed of the river. The ground rose to the foothills there, and the channel of the river lay deep below, with a sandy bank maybe twenty feet high on either side, and on the bank above the river lay the _Helen Mar_, propped up by the fruit trees.
By dusk there was no water except in the river, and some pools, but there were heaps of wreckage. Stevey Todd and I got down and looked things over. Down the valley we saw pieces of the town of Portate lying along, and beyond we saw the Pacific. And Stevey Todd wiped his face on his sleeves, and he says, "Maybe that's ridiculous, and maybe it ain't" he says, "but I'd argue it."
We swabbed off the decks of the Helen Mar, and scuttled the bottom of her to let the water out. Then the next day we went down to Portate. There were a sad lot of people drowned, including Captain Goodwin and most of the crew. Sadler and Irish we didn't find, and some others, and there was a man named Pickett who wasn't drowned. He went south to Lima by-and-by.
Afterwards we did up the ship's papers, and the cash and bills in the Captain's chest, thinking them proper to go to the ship's owners. And Stevey Todd says:
"A wreck's a wreck. That river ain't three foot deep. How'd they float her out of this? You say, for I ain't made up my mind," he says, which I didn't tell him, not knowing how they'd do it.
For a few days Stevey Todd and I lived high on ship's stores, loafing and looking down the valley at the damaged city. All the river front was wrecked. Halfway up the long sloping hill the streets were sloppy, and any man that had a roof to sleep on, slept drier there than inside, but the upper city was well enough.
We woke up from sleeping on the shady side of the Helen Mar one afternoon, to hear the jingle of bells, and soon the mule train pulled up alongside, and the drivers weren't used to seeing ships in that neighbourhood. They were expecting trouble from the _Helen Mar_ for their being two weeks late; but still, finding the Helen Mar up by the foothills looking for them, it appeared to strike them as impatient and not real ladylike. But what seemed strange to me was to see Sadler and Irish, that were taken for drowned beyond further trouble, standing in front of the mule-drivers, looking down at us, and then up at the Helen Mar, and Sadler seeming like he had a satirical poem on his mind which he was going to propagate.
I says, "No ghosteses allowed here. You go away."
"Tommy," says Sadler, and he came and anchored alongside us in the shadow of the Helen Mar, "I take it these here's the facts. Your natural respectfulness to elders was shocked out of you, and you ain't got over it."
"Over what?"
"Why, she must've got tanked up bad," he says. "She must have been full up and corked before she'd ever have come prancin' up here. My! my! It's turrible when a decent ship gets an appetite for alcohol. Here she lies! Shame and propriety forgotten! Immodestly exposed to grinnin' heathens!"
"You let the Helen Mar alone," I says pretty mad. "She ain't so bad as drowned corpses riding mules."
Then Stevey put in cautiously,