From the tea kitchen at the back of the café Harmi's granddaughter could hear sounds of splashing as sailors and rats alike abandoned both riverboat and the banjo player. The sailors in the main had jumped directly into the water while the rats mostly fell to the murky current having failed to gain a foothold on the hawser or on the other rats already clinging. Above the splashes rose a broad chorus in time and tempo with the swimmers until finally the splashing ceased and the dripping ensemble stood on the gravel beach. As one they sang and dripped as they gathered scraps of stray materials, anything long and solid.
    Young 'Llulah Madison laboriously filled the kettle just as Blake had once done in that same kitchen. The girl knew that waterlogged sailors meant that Nanna would drink tea while they warmed themselves and told their stories, mostly not drinking tea themselves. She dragged a large jug from the special pantry over to a small table in the tea kitchen.
    The sound of the sailors using their found tools again and again to conk the rats as they, too, arrived at shore, did not carry to that part of Mudcat Alley.