already in
the water cannot bring themselves to make the final plunge; at times,
following a sort of channel marked out in the river by tree-trunks,
she moves along with a satisfied air, except when a sudden shock
disturbs the passengers and throws them off their balance, all the
result of a collision with a sand-bar which no one dreamed was there.

Moreover, if the comparison with the Ship of State is not yet complete,
note the arrangement of the passengers. On the lower deck appear brown
faces and black heads, types of Indians, [1] Chinese, and mestizos,
wedged in between bales of merchandise and boxes, while there on the
upper deck, beneath an awning that protects them from the sun, are
seated in comfortable chairs a few passengers dressed in the fashion of
Europeans, friars, and government clerks, each with his _puro_ cigar,
and gazing at the landscape apparently without heeding the efforts
of the captain and the sailors to overcome the obstacles in the river.

The captain was a man of kindly aspect, well along in years, an old
sailor who in his youth had plunged into far vaster seas, but who now
in his age had to exercise much greater attention, care, and vigilance
to avoid dangers of a trivial character. And they were the same for
each day: the same sand-bars, the same hulk of unwieldy steamer wedged
into the same curves, like a corpulent dame in a jammed throng. So,
at each moment, the good man had to stop, to back up, to go forward at
half speed, sending--now to port, now to starboard--the five sailors
equipped with long bamboo poles to give force to the turn the rudder
had suggested. He was like a veteran who, after leading men through
hazardous campaigns, had in his age become the tutor of a capricious,
disobedient, and lazy boy.

Dona Victorina, the only lady seated in the European group, could say
whether the _Tabo_ was not lazy, disobedient, and capricious--Dona
Victorina, who, nervous as ever, was hurling invectives against the
cascos, bankas, rafts of coconuts, the Indians paddling about, and
even the washerwomen and bathers, who fretted her with their mirth and
chatter. Yes, the _Tabo_ would move along very well if there were no
Indians in the river, no Indians in the country, yes, if there were
not a single Indian in the world--regardless of the fact that the
helmsmen were Indians, the sailors Indians, Indians the engineers,
Indians ninety-nine per cent, of the passengers, and she herself also
an In