END OF THE HOTEL HELEN MAR. CONTINUATION OF CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM'S
NARRATIVE.
Sadler and Irish were gone, but Stevey Todd and I stayed on at Portate,
running the Hotel Helen Mar. Three years we ran her altogether, and made
money. I had a thought that by-and-by I'd go to the Isthmus, and charter
some kind of sloop, and dig out Clyde's canvas bags, and so go back to
Greenough sticky with glory. Whether it was laziness or ambition kept
me so long at Portate I couldn't say. It was a pleasant life. It's a
country where you don't notice time. Yet its politics are lively, and
the very land has malaria, as you might say; it has periodic shakes,
earthquakes, “tremblors,” they call them, or “trembloritos,” according
to size.
It was early one morning, in the spring of the year '73, that Stevey
Todd woke me up, and he says:
“I'm feeling unsteady like. Seems like the _Helen Mar_ wobbled.”
“She's took sick,” I says, sarcastic, “she's got the toothache.”
The only thing I had against Stevey Todd was, he was timid and had bad
dreams. He rode a tidal wave every two or three nights, according to
account. But it wasn't right to be messing another man's sleep with
tidal waves that didn't belong to the other man. I never set any tidal
waves on him. I spoke up to Stevey Todd that time, and went on deck, and
saw the Sarasara with an umbrella over her head, and I thought, maybe,
there had been a little shake, and maybe she was out looking for
trouble.
It came on the middle of the morning. The drivers that put up with us
that night were gone down the valley with their mules. I heard Stevey
Todd whoop down below, and he came on deck and he says, “She's wobbling
again!” meaning the _Helen Mar_. She was swaying to and fro. We got down
the ladder and stood off to look at her.
Then the land began twisting like snakes under our feet, and cut figure
eights, till I felt like soapsuds, and lay down on my face. Then I sat
up, and looked at the _Helen Mar,_ which shook and groaned like a live
thing. We heard the trees crack and snap behind her. She seemed to hang
a moment as if she hated to go; and over she went with a shriek and
crash. The water splashed and the dust went up. Stevey Todd and I ran to
the bank, and there lay the Hotel Helen Mar, ridiculous, bottom side up
in the Jiron River.
Stevey Todd sat down and cried.
I was disgusted with seeing the hotel standing on her roof-garden and
thinking of the mess there was inside her, all come of a tremblorito no
bigger than enough to cave in the bank and tip the _Helen Mar_ over, and
enough tidal wave to wash the streets of Portate, which needed it. I saw
the Sarasara shaking her old umbrella at us, and I was mad. I says to
Stevey Todd, “Go on! Run your blamed old hotel standing on your head!”
I says, “I'm going to Greenough,” and I lit out for Portate, leaving
him standing on the bank, with the tears running down his face, like his
heart was broken.
When I came to the harbour I found there were two ships in port bound
for California, and one by way of Panama. She was named the _Jane
Allen_.
The captain's name was Rickhart, a rough man, and the _Jane Allen_ was
an unclean boat, a brigantine, come from bad weather around the Horn.
I went aboard to look her over, and didn't like her. I was making up
my mind to go and see if the other mightn't be going by Panama too. And
then, coming through the forecastle, some one spoke to me from a bunk
and he says:
“When'd you drop in, Tommy?” and I stopped, and stared, and pretty soon
I made him out. It was Julius R. Craney.
He certainly was sick. He said he had shipped with Rickhart from New
York, to go to California and make his fortune, but thought now he
wouldn't live so far. He had the scurvy and was low in his mind, and
disappointed with fortune. I thought:
“If he took my money at Colon, he hasn't got it now.” He was poor enough
then. I guessed we'd have to call that off, and I says:
“The _Jane Allen_ it is. I'll go see the Windwards and Greenough.”
Craney was a yellow-looking man at that time, and glad enough when
I told him I was going to bring him some fruit, and take passage to
Panama, and look after him. Then I bargained with Rickhart for a passage
for two.
The next day I went back up to the _Helen Mar_, and found Stevey Todd
had a board fence in front of her, and was charging admission, and he
had a new advertisement tacked on the fence.
“Unparalleled Spectacle!” says Stevey Todd's bill-poster. “The Hotel
Helen Mar. On her chimneys, with her cellar in the Air! Built in the
United States! Exported to South America! Freighted Inland by a Tidal
Wave! Stood on her Head by an Earthquake! Only 10 cents!” And he was up
on a box himself encouraging the populace, and he seemed to think he had
a good business opening. But I says:
“Stevey,” I says, “come off it. We're going to Panama.”
He wanted to argue it was an unparallelled show, but I took him by the
suspenders and ran him down to Portate, arguing, and the populace went
in free, and we went aboard the _Jane Allen_. He thought the _Helen Mar_
was a better boat upside down than the _Jane Allen_ any side, and he was
right there, for the _Jane Allen_ was full of smells and unhealthiness.
But Craney was glad to see us.
We hadn't been a week at sea before her cook came down with ship's fever
and died in five days, but Craney picked up a bit for the time. Rickhart
came straight for Stevey Todd, and handed him his passage money.
“You're no passenger” he says. “You're a cook. You hear me!” Which
appeared like a rash statement, that Stevey Todd wasn't one to take
off-hand like that without argument, but Rickhart shoved him into the
galley before he got his ideas arranged right.
“You're the _Jane Allen's_ cook,” says Rickhart, and appeared to be
right, though his style of argument wasn't what Clyde had trained us
to. Stevey Todd had no proper outfit to meet it. The victuals he had
to serve up on the _Jane Allen_ was a worriment to his conscience too,
being tainted and bad, and by-and-by I came down too with ship's fever,
and Craney got sicker again with scurvy.
There's a long promontory, that the coasters see on the West Coast of
South America near the Line, with a square white tower on a bit of high
rock at the head of it. The promontory is called Mituas, and the point,
Punta Ananias. That may be because some one ran aground sometime on
the sand-bar off the end, and thought it deceitful. Some people say the
tower was built as an outlook against pirates long ago, but I judge the
facts are everybody has forgotten who built it or what he did it for.
It's a lighthouse now. If a man doesn't mind a curve in his view and a
few pin-head islands, there's nothing particular to interrupt his view
half round the world. The Andes make a jagged line on the east, and
ten of them are volcanoes. Those snow mountains and two or three ocean
currents got together, and arranged it with the equator that one part
of the year should be a good deal like another there, and all the
months behave respectful, and the Tower of Ananias have a breeze. It's a
handsome position with a picked climate.
The scurvy is a disease not so common now, but it used to act as if all
the bad salt pork you'd eaten were coming out through the skin, till
you looked like a Stilton cheese, and what you wanted was to be fed
on vegetables, and put ashore so as to get the bilge-water dried out.
Probably that wouldn't be possible, and you'd be sewed up in canvas, and
resemble an exclamation point, and be dropped overboard to punctuate the
end of the story. Chunk! you goes, and that's the end of you.
Ship's fever is a nautical brand of typhoid, due to bad conditions
aboard. The best thing for it is to get out of those conditions. Craney
had the scurvy, and I had ship's fever. Sometimes I was out of my head.
But when we sighted Punta Ananias, I was clear enough to tell Captain
Rickhart he'd have a burial shortly, or put me on shore.
“I've got no fancy for that,” he says, and took a look at me. I didn't
suppose he'd haul up, but he did. He'd buried two men already down
the coast, and the thing must have got on his nerves, for he anchored
overnight, and sent Craney and me to the lighthouse in a boat.
“You forfeit your passage money,” he says, and told the mate to buy what
truck he could, and tell the Dago in the lighthouse he could keep our
remains.
Rickhart was a rough man, and his ship was a rotten ship. I never knew a
meaner ship, though I've known meaner men than Rickhart on the whole.
Stevey Todd said he was going with us, and there Rickhart disagreed with
him again, and his argument was the same as before.
“You ain't,” he says, and seemed to prove it, though Stevey Todd claimed
he wasn't convinced.