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What with the roaring and clapping of the crowd, Flannagan and Madame Bill were up in front of the minister before Stevey Todd could be heard from the door, crying, "She ain't said no, Flannagan! She ain't said no! It ain't right!"
Now, soon after we landed in Colon, Craney and Abe Dalrimple got a chance for a passage to New York, and my hundred and forty went off somewhere about the same time. Sadler, Irish, nor Stevey Todd didn't take it, for they didn't have it, not to speak of other reasons. Abe's given to wandering in his mind, but he don't wander that way either.
We put the mule-drivers up that night and charged them South American rates. That was the way Stevey Todd and I started keeping the Helen Mar as a hotel. Sadler and Irish didn't care for the business. They went down to Portate and got jobs with the Transport Company, but Stevey Todd and I stayed by the Helen Mar, and ran the hotel.
A serpentine path winds down the slippery sides of the mountains into the village below, but few people ever use it, save an occasional charcoal-burner or wood-cutter. "Alas, Stevey!" cried Simplex, shuddering at the sight of this perilous descent, "we shall never get off with a whole skin that way.
"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.
Then Stevey Todd put his head through the window, and he says: "Now, supposing a party acted in such or such a way to one party, which acted another way to another party, what would you say might happen to be her meaning?" I gave my opinion candid, and truthful.
There's only Abe and Stevey Todd and me left of the Hebe Maitland's crew, unless Sadler and Little Irish maybe, for I left them in Burmah, and they may be there. But what I was going to say, Pemberton, is, I made a mistake somewhere." "Why," said Pemberton, "there you may be right."
But when Stevey Todd offered to admit that it blew "brisk, but when you say hard, I argue it;" and when Uncle Abimelech piped: "She blows aloft, she blows alow, Take in your topsails early;"
Just then it seemed to be going up and spreading out. Stevey Todd looked over the side, and gave a grunt, and he says, "Something's a-suckin' the water out of the harbour." Then I felt the Helen Mar tugging at her anchor, and the water was going by her like a mill race, and Cuco was gone, and on shore people were running away from the wharves and the river toward the upper town.
They sat down by the window, and Madame Bill was speaking: "Stevey Todd," she says, "I think it would not be such advantage, not at all.
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