"I'm only thinkin' of your wife and Bessie," says Bishop. "If anything happened, I'd want 'em to be near a lifeboat."
"Nothin's goin' to happen," I says. "They hasn't been a wreck on this lake for over a month. And this here boat, the City o' Benton Harbor, ain't never sank in her life."
"No," says Bishop; "and the Chicora and Eastland never sank till they sunk."
"The boats that sinks," I says, "is the boats that's overloaded. I was talkin' to the government checker-player down-stairs and he tells me that you put thirteen hundred on this boat and she's perfectly safe; and they's only eight hundred aboard now."
"Then why do they have the lifeboats?" ast Bishop.
"So's you can go back if you get tired o' the trip," I says.
"I ought to be back now," says Bishop, "where the firm can reach me."
"We ain't more'n two miles out," I says. "If your firm's any good they'll drag the bottom farther out than this. Besides," I says, "if trouble comes the lifeboats would handle us."
"Yes," says Bishop; "but it's women and children first."
"Sure!" I says. "That's the proper order for drownin'. The world couldn't struggle along without us ten-thousand-dollar scenario writers."