THE INCONCEIVABLE AND MONSTROUS
“Spare no money,” I said to Roscoe. “Let everything on the _Snark_ be
of the best. And never mind decoration. Plain pine boards is good
enough finishing for me. But put the money into the construction. Let
the _Snark_ be as staunch and strong as any boat afloat. Never mind
what it costs to make her staunch and strong; you see that she is made
staunch and strong, and I’ll go on writing and earning the money to pay
for it.”
And I did . . . as well as I could; for the _Snark_ ate up money faster
than I could earn it. In fact, every little while I had to borrow money
with which to supplement my earnings. Now I borrowed one thousand
dollars, now I borrowed two thousand dollars, and now I borrowed five
thousand dollars. And all the time I went on working every day and
sinking the earnings in the venture. I worked Sundays as well, and I
took no holidays. But it was worth it. Every time I thought of the
_Snark_ I knew she was worth it.
For know, gentle reader, the staunchness of the _Snark_. She is
forty-five feet long on the waterline. Her garboard strake is three
inches thick; her planking two and one-half inches thick; her
deck-planking two inches thick and in all her planking there are no
butts. I know, for I ordered that planking especially from Puget Sound.
Then the _Snark_ has four water-tight compartments, which is to say
that her length is broken by three water-tight bulkheads. Thus, no
matter how large a leak the _Snark_ may spring, Only one compartment
can fill with water. The other three compartments will keep her afloat,
anyway, and, besides, will enable us to mend the leak. There is another
virtue in these bulkheads. The last compartment of all, in the very
stern, contains six tanks that carry over one thousand gallons of
gasolene. Now gasolene is a very dangerous article to carry in bulk on
a small craft far out on the wide ocean. But when the six tanks that do
not leak are themselves contained in a compartment hermetically sealed
off from the rest of the boat, the danger will be seen to be very small
indeed.
The _Snark_ is a sail-boat. She was built primarily to sail. But
incidentally, as an auxiliary, a seventy-horse-power engine was
installed. This is a good, strong engine. I ought to know. I paid for
it to come out all the way from New York City. Then, on deck, above the
engine, is a windlass. It is a magnificent affair. It weighs several
hundred pounds and takes up no end of deck-room. You see, it is
ridiculous to hoist up anchor by hand-power when there is a
seventy-horse-power engine on board. So we installed the windlass,
transmitting power to it from the engine by means of a gear and
castings specially made in a San Francisco foundry.
The _Snark_ was made for comfort, and no expense was spared in this
regard. There is the bath-room, for instance, small and compact, it is
true, but containing all the conveniences of any bath-room upon land.
The bath-room is a beautiful dream of schemes and devices, pumps, and
levers, and sea-valves. Why, in the course of its building, I used to
lie awake nights thinking about that bath-room. And next to the
bath-room come the life-boat and the launch. They are carried on deck,
and they take up what little space might have been left us for
exercise. But then, they beat life insurance; and the prudent man, even
if he has built as staunch and strong a craft as the _Snark_, will see
to it that he has a good life-boat as well. And ours is a good one. It
is a dandy. It was stipulated to cost one hundred and fifty dollars,
and when I came to pay the bill, it turned out to be three hundred and
ninety-five dollars. That shows how good a life-boat it is.
I could go on at great length relating the various virtues and
excellences of the _Snark_, but I refrain. I have bragged enough as it
is, and I have bragged to a purpose, as will be seen before my tale is
ended. And please remember its title, “The Inconceivable and
Monstrous.” It was planned that the _Snark_ should sail on October 1,
1906. That she did not so sail was inconceivable and monstrous. There
was no valid reason for not sailing except that she was not ready to
sail, and there was no conceivable reason why she was not ready. She
was promised on November first, on November fifteenth, on December
first; and yet she was never ready. On December first Charmian and I
left the sweet, clean Sonoma country and came down to live in the
stifling city—but not for long, oh, no, only for two weeks, for we
would sail on December fifteenth. And I guess we ought to know, for
Roscoe said so, and it was on his advice that we came to the city to
stay two weeks. Alas, the two weeks went by, four weeks went by, six
weeks went by, eight weeks went by, and we were farther away from
sailing than ever. Explain it? Who?—me? I can’t. It is the one thing in
all my life that I have backed down on. There is no explaining it; if
there were, I’d do it. I, who am an artisan of speech, confess my
inability to explain why the _Snark_ was not ready. As I have said, and
as I must repeat, it was inconceivable and monstrous.
The eight weeks became sixteen weeks, and then, one day, Roscoe cheered
us up by saying: “If we don’t sail before April first, you can use my
head for a football.”
Two weeks later he said, “I’m getting my head in training for that
match.”
“Never mind,” Charmian and I said to each other; “think of the
wonderful boat it is going to be when it is completed.”
Whereat we would rehearse for our mutual encouragement the manifold
virtues and excellences of the _Snark_. Also, I would borrow more
money, and I would get down closer to my desk and write harder, and I
refused heroically to take a Sunday off and go out into the hills with
my friends. I was building a boat, and by the eternal it was going to
be a boat, and a boat spelled out all in capitals—B—O—A—T; and no
matter what it cost I didn’t care. So long as it was a B O A T.
And, oh, there is one other excellence of the _Snark_, upon which I
must brag, namely, her bow. No sea could ever come over it. It laughs
at the sea, that bow does; it challenges the sea; it snorts defiance at
the sea. And withal it is a beautiful bow; the lines of it are
dreamlike; I doubt if ever a boat was blessed with a more beautiful and
at the same time a more capable bow. It was made to punch storms. To
touch that bow is to rest one’s hand on the cosmic nose of things. To
look at it is to realize that expense cut no figure where it was
concerned. And every time our sailing was delayed, or a new expense was
tacked on, we thought of that wonderful bow and were content.
The _Snark_ is a small boat. When I figured seven thousand dollars as
her generous cost, I was both generous and correct. I have built barns
and houses, and I know the peculiar trait such things have of running
past their estimated cost. This knowledge was mine, was already mine,
when I estimated the probable cost of the building of the _Snark_ at
seven thousand dollars. Well, she cost thirty thousand. Now don’t ask
me, please. It is the truth. I signed the cheques and I raised the
money. Of course there is no explaining it, inconceivable and monstrous
is what it is, as you will agree, I know, ere my tale is done.
Then there was the matter of delay. I dealt with forty-seven different
kinds of union men and with one hundred and fifteen different firms.
And not one union man and not one firm of all the union men and all the
firms ever delivered anything at the time agreed upon, nor ever was on
time for anything except pay-day and bill-collection. Men pledged me
their immortal souls that they would deliver a certain thing on a
certain date; as a rule, after such pledging, they rarely exceeded
being three months late in delivery. And so it went, and Charmian and I
consoled each other by saying what a splendid boat the _Snark_ was, so
staunch and strong; also, we would get into the small boat and row
around the _Snark_, and gloat over her unbelievably wonderful bow.
“Think,” I would say to Charmian, “of a gale off the China coast, and
of the _Snark_ hove to, that splendid bow of hers driving into the
storm. Not a drop will come over that bow. She’ll be as dry as a
feather, and we’ll be all below playing whist while the gale howls.”
And Charmian would press my hand enthusiastically and exclaim: “It’s
worth every bit of it—the delay, and expense, and worry, and all the
rest. Oh, what a truly wonderful boat!”
Whenever I looked at the bow of the _Snark_ or thought of her
water-tight compartments, I was encouraged. Nobody else, however, was
encouraged. My friends began to make bets against the various sailing
dates of the _Snark_. Mr. Wiget, who was left behind in charge of our
Sonoma ranch was the first to cash his bet. He collected on New Year’s
Day, 1907. After that the bets came fast and furious. My friends
surrounded me like a gang of harpies, making bets against every sailing
date I set. I was rash, and I was stubborn. I bet, and I bet, and I
continued to bet; and I paid them all. Why, the women-kind of my
friends grew so brave that those among them who never bet before began
to bet with me. And I paid them, too.
“Never mind,” said Charmian to me; “just think of that bow and of being
hove to on the China Seas.”
“You see,” I said to my friends, when I paid the latest bunch of
wagers, “neither trouble nor cash is being spared in making the _Snark_
the most seaworthy craft that ever sailed out through the Golden
Gate—that is what causes all the delay.”
In the meantime editors and publishers with whom I had contracts
pestered me with demands for explanations. But how could I explain to
them, when I was unable to explain to myself, or when there was nobody,
not even Roscoe, to explain to me? The newspapers began to laugh at me,
and to publish rhymes anent the _Snark’s_ departure with refrains like,
“Not yet, but soon.” And Charmian cheered me up by reminding me of the
bow, and I went to a banker and borrowed five thousand more. There was
one recompense for the delay, however. A friend of mine, who happens to
be a critic, wrote a roast of me, of all I had done, and of all I ever
was going to do; and he planned to have it published after I was out on
the ocean. I was still on shore when it came out, and he has been busy
explaining ever since.
And the time continued to go by. One thing was becoming apparent,
namely, that it was impossible to finish the _Snark_ in San Francisco.
She had been so long in the building that she was beginning to break
down and wear out. In fact, she had reached the stage where she was
breaking down faster than she could be repaired. She had become a joke.
Nobody took her seriously; least of all the men who worked on her. I
said we would sail just as she was and finish building her in Honolulu.
Promptly she sprang a leak that had to be attended to before we could
sail. I started her for the boat-ways. Before she got to them she was
caught between two huge barges and received a vigorous crushing. We got
her on the ways, and, part way along, the ways spread and dropped her
through, stern-first, into the mud.
It was a pretty tangle, a job for wreckers, not boat-builders. There
are two high tides every twenty-four hours, and at every high tide,
night and day, for a week, there were two steam tugs pulling and
hauling on the _Snark_. There she was, stuck, fallen between the ways
and standing on her stern. Next, and while still in that predicament,
we started to use the gears and castings made in the local foundry
whereby power was conveyed from the engine to the windlass. It was the
first time we ever tried to use that windlass. The castings had flaws;
they shattered asunder, the gears ground together, and the windlass was
out of commission. Following upon that, the seventy-horse-power engine
went out of commission. This engine came from New York; so did its
bed-plate; there was a flaw in the bed-plate; there were a lot of flaws
in the bed-plate; and the seventy-horse-power engine broke away from
its shattered foundations, reared up in the air, smashed all
connections and fastenings, and fell over on its side. And the _Snark_
continued to stick between the spread ways, and the two tugs continued
to haul vainly upon her.
“Never mind,” said Charmian, “think of what a staunch, strong boat she
is.”
“Yes,” said I, “and of that beautiful bow.”
So we took heart and went at it again. The ruined engine was lashed
down on its rotten foundation; the smashed castings and cogs of the
power transmission were taken down and stored away—all for the purpose
of taking them to Honolulu where repairs and new castings could be
made. Somewhere in the dim past the _Snark_ had received on the outside
one coat of white paint. The intention of the colour was still evident,
however, when one got it in the right light. The _Snark_ had never
received any paint on the inside. On the contrary, she was coated
inches thick with the grease and tobacco-juice of the multitudinous
mechanics who had toiled upon her. Never mind, we said; the grease and
filth could be planed off, and later, when we fetched Honolulu, the
_Snark_ could be painted at the same time as she was being rebuilt.
By main strength and sweat we dragged the _Snark_ off from the wrecked
ways and laid her alongside the Oakland City Wharf. The drays brought
all the outfit from home, the books and blankets and personal luggage.
Along with this, everything else came on board in a torrent of
confusion—wood and coal, water and water-tanks, vegetables, provisions,
oil, the life-boat and the launch, all our friends, all the friends of
our friends and those who claimed to be their friends, to say nothing
of some of the friends of the friends of the friends of our crew. Also
there were reporters, and photographers, and strangers, and cranks, and
finally, and over all, clouds of coal-dust from the wharf.
We were to sail Sunday at eleven, and Saturday afternoon had arrived.
The crowd on the wharf and the coal-dust were thicker than ever. In one
pocket I carried a cheque-book, a fountain-pen, a dater, and a blotter;
in another pocket I carried between one and two thousand dollars in
paper money and gold. I was ready for the creditors, cash for the small
ones and cheques for the large ones, and was waiting only for Roscoe to
arrive with the balances of the accounts of the hundred and fifteen
firms who had delayed me so many months. And then—
And then the inconceivable and monstrous happened once more. Before
Roscoe could arrive there arrived another man. He was a United States
marshal. He tacked a notice on the _Snark’s_ brave mast so that all on
the wharf could read that the _Snark_ had been libelled for debt. The
marshal left a little old man in charge of the _Snark_, and himself
went away. I had no longer any control of the _Snark_, nor of her
wonderful bow. The little old man was now her lord and master, and I
learned that I was paying him three dollars a day for being lord and
master. Also, I learned the name of the man who had libelled the
_Snark_. It was Sellers; the debt was two hundred and thirty-two
dollars; and the deed was no more than was to be expected from the
possessor of such a name. Sellers! Ye gods! Sellers!
But who under the sun was Sellers? I looked in my cheque-book and saw
that two weeks before I had made him out a cheque for five hundred
dollars. Other cheque-books showed me that during the many months of
the building of the _Snark_ I had paid him several thousand dollars.
Then why in the name of common decency hadn’t he tried to collect his
miserable little balance instead of libelling the _Snark_? I thrust my
hands into my pockets, and in one pocket encountered the cheque-hook
and the dater and the pen, and in the other pocket the gold money and
the paper money. There was the wherewithal to settle his pitiful
account a few score of times and over—why hadn’t he given me a chance?
There was no explanation; it was merely the inconceivable and
monstrous.
To make the matter worse, the _Snark_ had been libelled late Saturday
afternoon; and though I sent lawyers and agents all over Oakland and
San Francisco, neither United States judge, nor United States marshal,
nor Mr. Sellers, nor Mr. Sellers’ attorney, nor anybody could be found.
They were all out of town for the weekend. And so the _Snark_ did not
sail Sunday morning at eleven. The little old man was still in charge,
and he said no. And Charmian and I walked out on an opposite wharf and
took consolation in the _Snark’s_ wonderful bow and thought of all the
gales and typhoons it would proudly punch.
“A bourgeois trick,” I said to Charmian, speaking of Mr. Sellers and
his libel; “a petty trader’s panic. But never mind; our troubles will
cease when once we are away from this and out on the wide ocean.”
And in the end we sailed away, on Tuesday morning, April 23, 1907. We
started rather lame, I confess. We had to hoist anchor by hand, because
the power transmission was a wreck. Also, what remained of our
seventy-horse-power engine was lashed down for ballast on the bottom of
the _Snark_. But what of such things? They could be fixed in Honolulu,
and in the meantime think of the magnificent rest of the boat! It is
true, the engine in the launch wouldn’t run, and the life-boat leaked
like a sieve; but then they weren’t the _Snark_; they were mere
appurtenances. The things that counted were the water-tight bulkheads,
the solid planking without butts, the bath-room devices—they were the
_Snark_. And then there was, greatest of all, that noble, wind-punching
bow.
We sailed out through the Golden Gate and set our course south toward
that part of the Pacific where we could hope to pick up with the
north-east trades. And right away things began to happen. I had
calculated that youth was the stuff for a voyage like that of the
_Snark_, and I had taken three youths—the engineer, the cook, and the
cabin-boy. My calculation was only two-thirds _off_; I had forgotten to
calculate on seasick youth, and I had two of them, the cook and the
cabin boy. They immediately took to their bunks, and that was the end
of their usefulness for a week to come. It will be understood, from the
foregoing, that we did not have the hot meals we might have had, nor
were things kept clean and orderly down below. But it did not matter
very much anyway, for we quickly discovered that our box of oranges had
at some time been frozen; that our box of apples was mushy and
spoiling; that the crate of cabbages, spoiled before it was ever
delivered to us, had to go overboard instanter; that kerosene had been
spilled on the carrots, and that the turnips were woody and the beets
rotten, while the kindling was dead wood that wouldn’t burn, and the
coal, delivered in rotten potato-sacks, had spilled all over the deck
and was washing through the scuppers.
But what did it matter? Such things were mere accessories. There was
the boat—she was all right, wasn’t she? I strolled along the deck and
in one minute counted fourteen butts in the beautiful planking ordered
specially from Puget Sound in order that there should be no butts in
it. Also, that deck leaked, and it leaked badly. It drowned Roscoe out
of his bunk and ruined the tools in the engine-room, to say nothing of
the provisions it ruined in the galley. Also, the sides of the _Snark_
leaked, and the bottom leaked, and we had to pump her every day to keep
her afloat. The floor of the galley is a couple of feet above the
inside bottom of the _Snark_; and yet I have stood on the floor of the
galley, trying to snatch a cold bite, and been wet to the knees by the
water churning around inside four hours after the last pumping.
Then those magnificent water-tight compartments that cost so much time
and money—well, they weren’t water-tight after all. The water moved
free as the air from one compartment to another; furthermore, a strong
smell of gasolene from the after compartment leads me to suspect that
some one or more of the half-dozen tanks there stored have sprung a
leak. The tanks leak, and they are not hermetically sealed in their
compartment. Then there was the bath-room with its pumps and levers and
sea-valves—it went out of commission inside the first twenty hours.
Powerful iron levers broke off short in one’s hand when one tried to
pump with them. The bath-room was the swiftest wreck of any portion of
the _Snark_.
And the iron-work on the _Snark_, no matter what its source, proved to
be mush. For instance, the bed-plate of the engine came from New York,
and it was mush; so were the casting and gears for the windlass that
came from San Francisco. And finally, there was the wrought iron used
in the rigging, that carried away in all directions when the first
strains were put upon it. Wrought iron, mind you, and it snapped like
macaroni.
A gooseneck on the gaff of the mainsail broke short off. We replaced it
with the gooseneck from the gaff of the storm trysail, and the second
gooseneck broke short off inside fifteen minutes of use, and, mind you,
it had been taken from the gaff of the storm trysail, upon which we
would have depended in time of storm. At the present moment the _Snark_
trails her mainsail like a broken wing, the gooseneck being replaced by
a rough lashing. We’ll see if we can get honest iron in Honolulu.
Man had betrayed us and sent us to sea in a sieve, but the Lord must
have loved us, for we had calm weather in which to learn that we must
pump every day in order to keep afloat, and that more trust could be
placed in a wooden toothpick than in the most massive piece of iron to
be found aboard. As the staunchness and the strength of the _Snark_
went glimmering, Charmian and I pinned our faith more and more to the
_Snark’s_ wonderful bow. There was nothing else left to pin to. It was
all inconceivable and monstrous, we knew, but that bow, at least, was
rational. And then, one evening, we started to heave to.
How shall I describe it? First of all, for the benefit of the tyro, let
me explain that heaving to is that sea manœuvre which, by means of
short and balanced canvas, compels a vessel to ride bow-on to wind and
sea. When the wind is too strong, or the sea is too high, a vessel of
the size of the _Snark_ can heave to with ease, whereupon there is no
more work to do on deck. Nobody needs to steer. The lookout is
superfluous. All hands can go below and sleep or play whist.
Well, it was blowing half of a small summer gale, when I told Roscoe
we’d heave to. Night was coming on. I had been steering nearly all day,
and all hands on deck (Roscoe and Bert and Charmian) were tired, while
all hands below were seasick. It happened that we had already put two
reefs in the big mainsail. The flying-jib and the jib were taken in,
and a reef put in the fore-staysail. The mizzen was also taken in.
About this time the flying jib-boom buried itself in a sea and broke
short off. I started to put the wheel down in order to heave to. The
_Snark_ at the moment was rolling in the trough. She continued rolling
in the trough. I put the spokes down harder and harder. She never
budged from the trough. (The trough, gentle reader, is the most
dangerous position all in which to lay a vessel.) I put the wheel hard
down, and still the _Snark_ rolled in the trough. Eight points was the
nearest I could get her to the wind. I had Roscoe and Bert come in on
the main-sheet. The _Snark_ rolled on in the trough, now putting her
rail under on one side and now under on the other side.
Again the inconceivable and monstrous was showing its grizzly head. It
was grotesque, impossible. I refused to believe it. Under double-reefed
mainsail and single-reefed staysail the _Snark_ refused to heave to. We
flattened the mainsail down. It did not alter the _Snark’s_ course a
tenth of a degree. We slacked the mainsail off with no more result. We
set a storm trysail on the mizzen, and took in the mainsail. No change.
The _Snark_ roiled on in the trough. That beautiful bow of hers refused
to come up and face the wind.
Next we took in the reefed staysail. Thus, the only bit of canvas left
on her was the storm trysail on the mizzen. If anything would bring her
bow up to the wind, that would. Maybe you won’t believe me when I say
it failed, but I do say it failed. And I say it failed because I saw it
fail, and not because I believe it failed. I don’t believe it did fail.
It is unbelievable, and I am not telling you what I believe; I am
telling you what I saw.
Now, gentle reader, what would you do if you were on a small boat,
rolling in the trough of the sea, a trysail on that small boat’s stern
that was unable to swing the bow up into the wind? Get out the
sea-anchor. It’s just what we did. We had a patent one, made to order
and warranted not to dive. Imagine a hoop of steel that serves to keep
open the mouth of a large, conical, canvas bag, and you have a
sea-anchor. Well, we made a line fast to the sea-anchor and to the bow
of the _Snark_, and then dropped the sea-anchor overboard. It promptly
dived. We had a tripping line on it, so we tripped the sea-anchor and
hauled it in. We attached a big timber as a float, and dropped the
sea-anchor over again. This time it floated. The line to the bow grew
taut. The trysail on the mizzen tended to swing the bow into the wind,
but, in spite of this tendency, the _Snark_ calmly took that sea-anchor
in her teeth, and went on ahead, dragging it after her, still in the
trough of the sea. And there you are. We even took in the trysail,
hoisted the full mizzen in its place, and hauled the full mizzen down
flat, and the _Snark_ wallowed in the trough and dragged the sea-anchor
behind her. Don’t believe me. I don’t believe it myself. I am merely
telling you what I saw.
Now I leave it to you. Who ever heard of a sailing-boat that wouldn’t
heave to?—that wouldn’t heave to with a sea-anchor to help it? Out of
my brief experience with boats I know I never did. And I stood on deck
and looked on the naked face of the inconceivable and monstrous—the
_Snark_ that wouldn’t heave to. A stormy night with broken moonlight
had come on. There was a splash of wet in the air, and up to windward
there was a promise of rain-squalls; and then there was the trough of
the sea, cold and cruel in the moonlight, in which the _Snark_
complacently rolled. And then we took in the sea-anchor and the mizzen,
hoisted the reefed staysail, ran the _Snark_ off before it, and went
below—not to the hot meal that should have awaited us, but to skate
across the slush and slime on the cabin floor, where cook and cabin-boy
lay like dead men in their bunks, and to lie down in our own bunks,
with our clothes on ready for a call, and to listen to the bilge-water
spouting knee-high on the galley floor.
In the Bohemian Club of San Francisco there are some crack sailors. I
know, because I heard them pass judgment on the _Snark_ during the
process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter
with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could not
run. She was all right in every particular, they said, except that I’d
never be able to run her before it in a stiff wind and sea. “Her
lines,” they explained enigmatically, “it is the fault of her lines.
She simply cannot be made to run, that is all.” Well, I wish I’d only
had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board the _Snark_ the
other night for them to see for themselves their one, vital, unanimous
judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one thing the _Snark_ does
to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor fast for’ard and a full
mizzen flattened down aft. Run? At the present moment, as I write this,
we are bowling along before it, at a six-knot clip, in the north-east
trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea is running. There is nobody at the
wheel, the wheel is not even lashed and is set over a half-spoke
weather helm. To be precise, the wind is north-east; the _Snark’s_
mizzen is furled, her mainsail is over to starboard, her head-sheets
are hauled flat: and the _Snark’s_ course is south-south-west. And yet
there are men who have sailed the seas for forty years and who hold
that no boat can run before it without being steered. They’ll call me a
liar when they read this; it’s what they called Captain Slocum when he
said the same of his _Spray_.
As regards the future of the _Snark_ I’m all at sea. I don’t know. If I
had the money or the credit, I’d build another _Snark_ that _would_
heave to. But I am at the end of my resources. I’ve got to put up with
the present _Snark_ or quit—and I can’t quit. So I guess I’ll have to
try to get along with heaving the _Snark_ to stern first. I am waiting
for the next gale to see how it will work. I think it can be done. It
all depends on how her stern takes the seas. And who knows but that
some wild morning on the China Sea, some gray-beard skipper will stare,
rub his incredulous eyes and stare again, at the spectacle of a weird,
small craft very much like the _Snark_, hove to stern-first and riding
out the gale?
P.S. On my return to California after the voyage, I learned that the
_Snark_ was forty-three feet on the water-line instead of forty-five.
This was due to the fact that the builder was not on speaking terms
with the tape-line or two-foot rule.