CHAPTER IV.

SADLER IN P0RTATE. THE NARRATIVE C0NTINUED.

I don't know how Sadler got to be Harbour Master for the TransportCompany, but so he did, and he was a capable harbour master. TheTransport Company thought much of him, only they said he wasreckless, and he surely acted youthful to belie his looks. He used togo around in a grimy little tugboat called the _Harvest Moon_,with Irish running the engine below, and himself busy thrashing andblackguarding roustabouts, joyful like a dewy morn; but at evening he'dbe found on the deck of either the _Helen Mar_ or the _HarvestMoon_, playing a banjo very melancholy, and singing his verses totunes that he got from secret sources of sorrow maybe, which theverses were interesting, but the tunes weren't fortunate. He sometimes wasparticular about his poetry being accurate to facts, but he'd no giftas to tunes.

The trouble he got into all came from throwing Pedro Hillary off thestern of the _Harvest Moon_, so that Pete went out with thetide, because no one thought him worth fishing out, till it was foundthat he was a member of some sort of Masonic Society among thenegroes in Ferdinand Street, and a British subject too, whom came fromJamaica to Portate. But before that time Pete was picked up by arowboat, and came back to Portate and Ferdinand Street. He andFerdinand Street were somewhat mad. It really was a street occupied by negroes,and Sadler wasn't popular there.

He came up to the _Helen Mar_ the night of the day thatPete went out of the harbour, and lay in a hammock on deck, where onecould look down past the fruit trees toward the city and the mouth ofthe Jiron. He occasionally was making a requiem for Pete Hillary, such as hethought he ought to do under those circumstances, though the requiemwas no good and the tune vicious. "Pete Hillary," it began,