We have sailed too far. All day the canal has carried us through the gentle English countryside, but evening finds us in a wasteland of abandoned factories.

We plunge beneath dank, echoing bridges and scrape over reefs of drowned rubble. In the bone-gray dusk, a single human figure hurries along a path, eyes downcast as if we did not exist.

We moor beneath towering smokestacks whose fierce breath once blackened the city. As our engine dies, only a drab wind gutters in their throats. Chilled and silent, we hasten below to the cabin's cheerful warmth.

My wife Linda and I are unlikely mariners on a strange voyage. Our track is part of a 2,500-mile network of manmade waterways that lace the heart of England.

Q. Underline a sentence which supports the answer to question No. 1.