But all I owned went down on the Anaconda. I got back to San Francisco in course of time, but no richer than when I left Greenough, and ten years or more older.
Kreps was a man very given to sentiments, in particular about “Ewigweibliche,” and I never knew a man that kept himself more entertained. He settled down for the time, with Veronica and Kamelillo for his family, in a fine house in the upper town of San Francisco. Kamelillo used to cook unlikely things which Kreps and Veronica ate peaceable between them. Kreps was well-to-do, and he seemed cut out for a happy life. Any kind of cooking suited him. The whole world grew knowledge for him to collect. He could suck sentiment out of a hard-boiled egg. But I went to live with Stevey Todd where the cooking was better, and loafed about the streets and docks, wondering what I'd do next. I never knew what became of Kreps after we left San Francisco.
CHAPTER VIII. — SADLER IN SALERATUS. THE GREEN DRAGON PAGODA. THE NARRATIVE GOES ON.
One day I was by the docks, where some people were busy and some were like me, loafing or looking for a berth; and I came on a neat-looking, three-masted ship, named the Good Sister, which appeared to me a kindly name. She was being overhauled by the carpenters. I asked one of them, “Where's the captain?”
“She ain't got any,” he says. “It's the owners are doing it.”
“Maybe you'll remark,” I says, “who they happen to be.”
“Shan and Sadler of Saleratus,” he says.
“I believe you're a liar,” I says, surprised at the name.