Is it possible to build a ship of the kind he requires? Quite so; and the ship-builder knows he can accomplish it by swelling out the vessel at the bows, and bellying her out at the sides, and broadening her at the stern, and altogether making her of such a ridiculous shape, that she will move slowly, and become the grave of many a hapless mariner. The ship-builder not only knows that this can be done; but, complying with the wishes of the merchant-owner, he does it, and has done it for so long a period that he has grown to believe that this clumsy structure is the true shape of a ship, and would not, and could not, build any other. Nay, still more lamentable to state: this awkward form has so grown into his thoughts, and become part of his belief, that after the foolish law is repealed, it will take long, long years to eradicate the deception from his mind. In fact, a new generation of ship-builders will have to be waited for, before ships will appear of a proper and convenient form. Fortunately, that new generation has already sprung up beyond the Atlantic, and by their aid we shall get out of this hundred years' dilemma a little sooner. Even they have been half a century in arriving at what is yet far from perfection in the art; but, unsaddled by the incubus of the tax, they have been looking at the fishes in the sea, and drawing a few ideas from the mechanism of nature; and hence their present superiority. Now you will better understand what I mean by the assertion that _political science is the most important study that can occupy the minds of men_. CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN. A VERY GRAND OBSTACLE. The good ship _Inca_, then, was like most others built to the merchants' order. She was "pigeon-breasted," and bulged out along the sides in such a fashion, that her hold was far wider than her beam; and, looking up from the bottom of the hold, the sides appeared to curve towards each other, and converge over you like a roof. I knew that this was the shape of the _Inca_, for it was then the universal shape of merchant vessels, and I was somewhat used to noticing ships of all kinds that came into our bay. I have said that, while trying through the slits of the top of the box with my knife, I felt something soft, which I took to be a bale of linen; but I had also noticed that it did not extend over the whole lid. On the contrary, there was about a foot at the end--that end contiguous to the ship's timbers--where I could feel nothing. There were two slits, and I had run my blade through each without touching any substance, either hard or soft. I concluded, therefore, that there was nothing there, and that about a foot of space behind the bale of linen was empty.