and which would have holed her if she had
bumped against it. But she kept her position, it seemed to me, to an
inch, without apparently any trouble to these boys. You could not have
done it with oars. And her engine did not take up the space of three
men, even on the assumption that you would pack people as tight as
sardines in a box.

Not the room of three people, I tell you! But no one would want to pack
a boat like a sardine-box. There must be room enough to handle the oars.
But in that old ship's boat, even if she had been desperately
overcrowded, there was power (manageable by two riverside youngsters) to
get away quickly from a ship's side (very important for your safety and
to make room for other boats), the power to keep her easily head to sea,
the power to move at five to seven knots towards a rescuing ship, the
power to come safely alongside. And all that in an engine which did not
take up the room of three people.

A poor boatman who had to scrape together painfully the few sovereigns of
the price had the idea of putting that engine into his boat. But all
these designers, directors, managers, constructors, and others whom we
may include in the generic name of Yamsi, never thought of it for the
boats of the biggest tank on earth, or rather on sea. And therefore they
assume an air of impatient superiority and make objections--however sick
at heart they may be. And I hope they are; at least, as much as a grocer
who has sold a tin of imperfect salmon which destroyed only half a dozen
people. And you know, the tinning of salmon was "progress" as much at
least as the building of the _Titanic_. More, in fact. I am not
attacking shipowners. I care neither more nor less for Lines, Companies,
Combines, and generally for Trade arrayed in purple and fine linen than
the Trade cares for me. But I am attacking foolish arrogance, which is
fair game; the offensive posture of superiority by which they hide the
sense of their guilt, while the echoes of the miserably hypocritical
cries along the alley-ways of that ship: "Any more women? Any more
women?" linger yet in our ears.

I have been expecting from one or the other of them all bearing the
generic name of Yamsi, something, a sign of some sort, some sincere
utterance, in the course of this Admirable Inquiry, of manly, of genuine
compunction. In vain. All trade talk. Not a whisper--except for the
conventional expression of regret at the beginning of the y