Presently Philip started erect and took off his cap. He threw it on the seat beside him, and ran his fingers, defining wavy ridges, through his hair. "It's no use, Stratton," he said, "I'm in a hole. Come, wake up, I want to talk things over."
Stratton swept aside the handkerchief and rose on his elbow. "I am listening," he answered, "but I am afraid of this glare; it brings on this infernal pain in my head. I must get to New York or somewhere, and see an oculist. Anyway, what is the use of going all over the ground again, Captain? We discussed it thoroughly yesterday and the day before. It amounts to this,—you have plunged a little beyond your depth. You are afraid that the mills will be attached for your own personal debts, and when Judge Kingsley comes home, in a few weeks, he is going to find, well, not what he expects, unless—"
"He's going to find that I've made a tremendous mess of things," Philip broke in. "I've got to ask him, first of all, to put up for me, and he can't afford to. Why, he won't be able; he can't sell anything; real estate is dead, completely; he's land-poor, like everybody else these times. Besides, he's gone security for people; he's been ready to stake any one who voted for him—or says he did. They've got him all tied up in new town sites, fisheries, every sort of a scheme."
"If my schooner had made good," said Stratton, "I would be glad to tide you through. But that was pretty hard luck, Captain. I put my faith in her; I could have sworn by that master and crew. And she had picked up a fine lot of peltries, fifteen hundred prime sealskins, when she struck that rock off Unimak Pass and went down. She cost me a good deal of money; I was hard pressed to outfit her, and now—nothing to show for it."
"Too bad," answered Kingsley thoughtfully, "too bad. I guess, Mark, we're in the same hole, together."
There was a brief silence, then Stratton said, "There is just one way out, Captain."
"You mean—well, just what do you mean?"
"I mean with your standing, your family relations, above all to Judge Silas Kingsley, it would be perfectly safe; the Phantom could go unsuspected anywhere; carry anything. And you know every island, current, tide-rip, shoal from Seattle to British Columbia. Then—there is that lonely old ruin around the bluff at Freeport. Why, at high tide you could run almost under the walls."
Philip laughed unpleasantly. "You are reckoning without my wife. She's the sort of woman to make it a matter of conscience and give the whole thing away."
"She would, I have no doubt of it, if she knew." Stratton paused a moment, then said, "It is very unfortunate you never took that house you talked so much about taking, in town. But how is it you never bring her with us on a cruise, now? She used to like the water."