One day I was by the docks, where some people were busy and
some were like me, loafing or looking for a berth; and I came on a
neat-looking, three-masted ship, named the _Good Sister_, which
appeared to me a kindly name. She was being overhauled by the
carpenters. I asked one of them, "Where's the captain?"
"She ain't got any," he says. "It's the owners are doing it."
"Maybe you'll remark," I says, "who they happen to be."
"Shan and Sadler of Saleratus," he says.
"I believe you're a liar," I says, surprised at the name.
"Which there's a little tallow-faced runt in perspective," he says,
climbing down the stays, "that I can lick," he says, being misled by
my size. And when that was over, I started for Saleratus.
It was a town to the south, down near the coast. That's not its name
now, because it's reformed and doesn't like to remember the days
before it was regenerated. At that time some of it was Mexican, and
more of it was Chinese, and some of it wasn't connected with anything
but perdition.
Shan and Sadler did a mixed mercantile business, and they seemed to
be prosperous people, but I take it Fu Shan mainly carried on the
business, and Sadler was the reason why the firm's property was
respected and let alone by the Caucasians.
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