On the lower deck appear brown faces and black heads, types of Indians, [1] Chinese, and mestizos, wedged in between bales of merchandise and boxes, while there on the upper deck, beneath an awning that protects them from the sun, are seated in comfortable chairs a few passengers dressed in the fashion of Europeans, friars, and government clerks, each with his _puro_ cigar, and gazing at the landscape apparently without heeding the efforts of the captain and the sailors to overcome the obstacles in the river.
The captain was a man of kindly aspect, well along in years, an old sailor who in his youth had plunged into far vaster seas, but who now in his age had to exercise much greater attention, care, and vigilance to avoid dangers of a trivial character.

And they were the same for each day: the same sand-bars, the same hulk of unwieldy steamer wedged into the same curves, like a corpulent dame in a jammed throng.

So, at each moment, the good man had to stop, to back up, to go forward at half speed, sending--now to port, now to starboard--the five sailors equipped with long bamboo poles to give force to the turn the rudder had suggested.

He was like a veteran who, after leading men through hazardous campaigns, had in his age become the tutor of a capricious, disobedient, and lazy boy.
Dona Victorina, the only lady seated in the European group, could say whether the _Tabo_ was not lazy, disobedient, and capricious--Dona Victorina, who, nervous as ever, was hurling invectives against the cascos, bankas, rafts of coconuts, the Indians paddling about, and even the washerwomen and bathers, who fretted her with their mirth and chatter.

Yes, the _Tabo_ would move along very well if there were no Indians in the river, no Indians in the country, yes, if there were not a single Indian in the world--regardless of the fact that the helmsmen were Indians, the sailors Indians, Indians the engineers, Indians ninety-nine per cent, of the passengers, and she herself also an Indian if the rouge were scratched off and her pretentious gown removed.