It did not seem to square with my ideas as to what constituted sense.
"It is very beautiful, my son," I observed, after inspecting the vessel carefully for a few moments.

"Her lines are perfect, and the model indicates that she will prove a speedy proposition, but it seems to me that you have left out one of the most important features of a permanently successful sailing vessel." Noah looked at me patronizingly, and shrugged his shoulders as much as to inquire what on earth I knew about boat-building.
"If you refer either to the bowsprit or to the flying balloon-jib," he replied coldly, and acting generally as if he were very much bored, "you are entirely wrong.

This isn't a sloop, or a catamaran, or a caravel.

Neither is it a government transport, an ocean gray-hound, or a ram.

It's just a cat-boat, nothing more." "No," said I."I refer to nothing of the sort.