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.
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