"She's a good boat, Sam, but smallish to ride out such a storm as this."
"What a goat you are, Sam," said Tombs, also crossly, "not to keep two ferry-boats, so that if one breaks down you have the other."
"When we made up our minds to spend the winter here," I said, "I ordered another; in fact, two. But they're still building; and besides, what if the Hobo does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. Nobody would suffer much."
"No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street!
"I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these gentlemen as business men. You always gamble; and when you're in good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve smoothly."
"Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one steady, conservative man may often avert a panic."
"Show me the man," I said. "Has any one here ever caused a panic or averted one? But you all lose money just as often because you're on the spot, as make it. Wouldn't you all be the richer for an absence now and then?"
"Of course," said Randall, "there are times when it doesn't matter one way or the other. But when—well, when the market's in the state it is now, it's life or death, almost, to be on the spot."
"I don't understand," I said. "When the market looks fussy, why not sell out, and wait for better times?"
"We can't sell out," said Billoo. "We're loaded up to the muzzle."