they knew more about the Hotel Helen Mar than they did of the
Peruvian Government. We ran the hotel to surprise South America.

It was nearly a year before we heard from the ship's owners, though
we sent them the proper papers; and then a man came out, and looked
at the _Helen Mar_, and says:

"I guess she belongs where she is. Running a hotel, are you?" and he
carried off the sails and other rigging.

She was propped up at first only by the bunch of fruit trees, but
by-and-by we bedded her in stones. We painted a sign across her forty
feet long, but cut no doors, because a seaman won't treat a ship that
way. You had to climb ladders to the deck.

Inside she was comfortable. No hotel piazza could equal the _Helen
Mar_'s deck on a warm night, with the old southern stars overhead,
when a bunch of mule-drivers maybe would be forward talking, and I
and Stevey Todd aft with a couple of Spanish planters, or an agent,
or the officers of a warship maybe from England or the States. Over
on the hillside lay Captain Goodwin and most of the crew of the
_Helen Mar_, wishing us well, and close to starboard you heard
all night the tinkle of the Jiron River down in its channel. It was
twenty feet from the deck of the _Helen Mar_ to the ground, and
twenty feet from there to the river.

Portate was a pleasant little city in those days. It had pink-uniformed
soldiery for the city guard, and a fat, warm-tempered Mayor, who
used often to come up to the hotel and cool off when something
had stuck a pin into his dignity that made him feverish. Stevey