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.
Here she lies! Shame and propriety forgotten! Immodestly exposed to
grinnin' heathens!"

"You let the _Helen Mar_ alone," I says pretty mad. "She ain't
so bad as drowned corpses riding mules."

Then Stevey put in cautiously, and said he'd never really made up
his mind, and had doubts of it which he was ready to argue, supposing
Sadler had any facts to put up as bearing on his and Irish's