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There is a popular English belief that if you can’t get in the water, you might as well get on it. It may be that the seas around our coasts are too chill and uninviting for round-the-year bathing, or that in many cases treacherous currents and sharp incisor-like rocks beneath the water discourage all but the most venturesome. Perhaps the real answer is that we are islanders and islands, on the whole, tend to produce sea-faring people. Our early history of exploration and discovery, to say nothing of downright piracy, goes some way to support this. However that may be, the Englishman is not just content to get on the sea, he is also irresistibly compelled to get on his inland waterways. Our rivers, canals and lakes, besides proving a cheap, if relatively slow form of transport, attract a regular army of enthusiastic amateurs who spend their winters scraping and painting their boats in readiness for the warmer weather, some even going so far as to build their own craft. When spring comes, the proud owners take to the water in their little boats, white sails flapping, like so many ducks. There are of course innumerable rowing boats, punts, skiffs and dinghies, and superior, motor-powered cabin cruisers whose owners wear yachting caps and nautical-looking sweater. These last, usually flying a club pennant and with a girl or two stretched out on the cabin roof, proceed at speed down the river creating a wash that sets the smaller boats bobbing and bouncing and even on occasion capsizing. Even their magnificence, however, is eclipsed by the rowing eights who streak up and down in their elegant long boats, dipping their oars to the merciless cries of the coach: ‘In – Out – In – Out’. These are the giants of the river, bronzed and muscular, oblivious of everything but the precision of their timing and the need for speed.
Any description of our inland waterways would be incomplete without reference to those who have made the water their way of life. Disregarding damp, inconvenience, gales, storms and the danger of floods, they make their homes on the water, in houseboats or converted barges, becoming, as it were, a species of human water-rat. Their original intention may have been to get away from the tension and frustration of city or suburban life, but it is soon apparent that theirs is no gipsy existence. Their homes, moored or floating, are painted in gay colours, electric light and bathrooms are installed, curtains appear at the windows and neighbours vie with one another in the cultivation of trailing pot plants and hanging baskets of flowers. The result is comfortably suburban ---- a dog or a cat is frequently introduced into the domestic scene ---- and the whole is an excellent example of the art of compromise. The owners have lost none of their creature comforts, but they have satisfied their urge to live on the water.
36. The writer suggests that the majority of islanders ____.
A) have to make their living from the sea
B) are strongly attracted to the sea
C) are only interested in going to sea
D) have to go on voyages of discovery
37. The passage tells us that, among boat-lovers, there are some ____.
A) experienced boat-builders
B) amateur soldiers
C) do-it-yourself enthusiasts
D) members of the armed forces
38. What happens in the spring? The boat-owners ____.
A) go into the water with their boats
B) sail down river with the ducks
C) get out on water in their boats
D) get their boats out of the water
39. Sometimes one of the smaller boats overturned because ____.
A) there was a sudden surge in the water
B) it couldn’t keep up with the bigger boats
C) there was a sudden gush of water
D) it got in the way of the bigger boats
40. It seems that people who decide to make their homes on the water ____.
A) disregard the risks and inconveniences
B) enjoy the challenge of dangerous situations
C) want to live an unconventional life
D) would like to have been gypsies