ngly, and shrugged his shoulders as much as
to inquire what on earth I knew about boat-building.

"If you refer either to the bowsprit or to the flying balloon-jib," he
replied coldly, and acting generally as if he were very much bored,
"you are entirely wrong. This isn't a sloop, or a catamaran, or a
caravel. Neither is it a government transport, an ocean gray-hound, or
a ram. It's just a cat-boat, nothing more."

"No," said I. "I refer to nothing of the sort. I don't know much about
boats, but I know enough to be aware without your telling me, that
this affair is not a battle-ship, tug, collier, brig, lugger, barge or
gravy-boat. Neither is it a dhow, gig or skiff. But that does not
affect the validity of my criticism that you have forgotten an
important factor in her successful use as a sailing craft."

"What is it?" he demanded, curtly.

"An ocean," said I. "How the dickens do you expect to sail a boat like
that off here in the woods, where there isn't enough water to float a
parlor-match?"

He laughed quietly as I advanced this objection, and for the first
time in his life gave evidence of the haunting idea that later took
complete possession of his mind.

"Time enough for that," said he. "There'll be more ocean around here
some day than you can keep off with a million umbrellas, and don't you
forget it."

Somehow or other his reply irritated me. The idea seemed so
preposterously absurd. How on earth he ever expected to get an ocean
out there, half way up the summit of our highest mountain, no sane
person could imagine, and I turned the vials of my wrathful satire
upon him.

"You ought to start a Ferry Company from the Desert of Sahara to the
top of Mount Ararat," I observed, as dryly as I knew how.

"The notion is not new," he replied instantly. "I have already given
the matter some thought, and it isn't impossible that the thing will
be done before I get through. There will be a demand for such a thing
all right some day, but whether it will be a permanent demand is the
question."

It may interest the public to know that it was at this period that I
invented a term that has since crept into the language as a permanent
figure of speech. Speaking to my wife on the subject of the day's
adventure that very evening, after I had expressed my determination to
apply for the appointment of a Commission De Lunatico Enquirendo on
Noah's behalf, she endeavored to quiet my anxiety on the score of his
good sense