Just then it seemed to be going up and spreading
out. Stevey Todd looked over the side, and gave a grunt, and he says,
"Something's a-suckin' the water out of the harbour."
Then I felt the _Helen Mar_ tugging at 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.
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