“Why, where all the water comes from. Just look at it now. Here have we been coming along for more’n a week, and it’s been nothing but water, water, water.”
“And we could go on for months, Tom, sailing, sailing away into the distant ocean, and still it would be nothing but water, water, water.”
“Well, but what’s the good of it all, Mas’r Harry? Why, if I was to get up a company to do it, and drain it all off, the bottom of the sea here would be all land, and people could walk or have railways instead of being cooped up in a great long tossing box like this, and made so—Oh, dear me, it nearly makes me ill again to think of it.”
“Ah! that would be a capital arrangement, Tom,” I said smiling. “What a lot more room there would be on the earth then!”
“Wouldn’t there, Mas’r Harry?” he cried eagerly.
“A tremendous deal more, Tom. Every poor fellow might have an estate of his own; but where would you drain the water to?”
“Where would I drain the water to, Mas’r Harry?”
“To be sure,” I said, enjoying his puzzled look. “If you take it away from here you must send it somewhere else.”
“Of course, Mas’r Harry, of course,” he replied eagerly. “Oh, I’d employ thousands of navvies to dig a big drain and let the water right off.”
“Yes, I understand that,” I replied; “but where is the drain to lead?”