"A great many persons have wondered as you do," the Doctor answered; "and some have ceased wondering, and tried the principles on both small and large craft. A few years ago one of the races of the New York Yacht Club was won by a boat on the double-canoe principle, and since then several of these boats have been built with different degrees of success. In England a steamer called the _Castalia_ was built for crossing the channel between Dover and Calais, but she proved to be very slow in spite of her enormous engines, which were intended to propel her not less than twenty miles an hour. The chief defect in her construction was that she was built like two complete boats placed side by side, whereas she should have been shaped like a single boat that had been sawed in two from one end to the other. The water is ploughed off from the bows of a boat, as you can see at any time, and when two boats are close to each other and parallel, the water is banked up between them and retards their progress; but where a double boat is built as I have suggested, and as the South Sea Islanders build them, the case is different, and the two hulls glide as smoothly as though they were only one. [Illustration: AMERICAN MODIFICATION OF A SAVAGE BOAT.] "An American, who has given much study to the subject, has devised a form of boat for pleasure purposes along the coast, that he claims to be a vast improvement over the boats we now have in use. He suggests a double hull sixteen feet long, and each half of the hull eighteen inches wide at the top, and the same in depth. He puts these hulls five feet apart, connects them by beams, and lays down a light deck thirteen feet long and eight feet wide at its broadest part. He places a rudder on each hull, and attaches the two to a single tiller, and he rigs the boat with a lateen sail, though he frankly confesses that the ordinary boom-and-gaff sail is better for all purposes except that of picturesqueness. As the Americans are a practical people, they are not very likely to adopt the sail of the Mediterranean and the South Seas because it looks well." While this conversation concerning boats was going on the strange craft swung into the path of the steamer, and a rope was thrown from the latter to the former. It was caught by one of her men, and without the speed of the steamer slacking in the least, the Cingalese boat came along-side and was made fast. A native clambered up the rope with the speed of a monkey, and Frank observed that he grasped it between the first and second toes of his feet, exactly as the Malays do. Like the Malays they go barefooted all their lives, and consequently the toes retain far more freedom of action than they would if confined in boots or shoes.