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.”
“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!”