The Belted Seas | Page 9

her anchor, and the water was
going by her like a mill race, and Cuco was gone, and on shore people
were running away from the wharves and the river toward the upper
town.
I saw the trees swaying, though there was no wind, and a building fell
down near the water.
Then Stevey Todd whirled around and flung up his hands.
"Oh!" he says; "Oh! Oh!"
I never saw a scareder cook, for he dropped on the deck, and clapped
his legs around a capstan and screamed, "Lord! Lord!"
For the whole Pacific Ocean appeared to be heaving out its chest and
coming on, eighty feet high. I tied myself around another capstan, and I
says, "Good-night, Tommy!"
The tidal wave broke into surf an eighth of a mile out, and came on us
in a tumble of foam, hissing and roaring like a loose 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