sink if they was more’n that?” says I.
“I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t,” he says, “but that’s all the law allows.”
For a minute I felt like offerin’ him a lump sum to let seven or eight hundred more on the boat and be sure that she went down; meantime I’d be over gettin’ a drink. But then I happened to think that the Missus would be among those lost; and though a man might do a whole lot better the second time, the chances was that he’d do a whole lot worse. So I passed up the idear and stayed aboard, prayin’ for the time when we’d be three miles out on Lake Michigan.