“Si, senor,” he says, “look! Ver' good.” Then he nodded towards the shore:
“La Sarasara! Oh, la Sarasara!” laughing and holding up his mangoes.
The smoke-cap over the Sarasara was blacker than usual and uncommon big it looked to me. 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.
I saw the trees swaying, though there was no wind, and a building fell down near the water.
Then Stevey Todd whirled around and flung up his hands.
“Oh!” he says; “Oh! Oh!”
I never saw a scareder cook, for he dropped on the deck, and clapped his legs around a capstan and screamed, “Lord! Lord!”
For the whole Pacific Ocean appeared to be heaving out its chest and coming on, eighty feet high. I tied myself around another capstan, and I says, “Good-night, Tommy!”
The tidal wave broke into surf an eighth of a mile out, and came on us in a tumble of foam, hissing and roaring like a loose menagerie, and down she comes on the Helen Mar, and up goes the Helen Mar climbing through the foam. Me, I hung on to the capstan.