"'To begin with?' That implies more than one, which is, one would fancy, the essential point of a monopoly."
"Perhaps it is," said Jimmy vaguely. "Still, when we get our hand in, there will be three."
Anthea may have had her reasons for not pressing the question then, for she laughed. "Of course!" she said. "Three monopolies. Well, I suppose one must excuse you. You can hold a steamer's wheel."
Jimmy, on the whole, felt relieved when the others sauntered in their direction, and was less grieved than he might have been under different circumstances when Austerly drew Miss Merril away. He had felt once or twice before, during discussions with his sister, that keen intelligence is not invariably a commendable thing in a woman. After that, Jordan had a good many instructions to give him, and by the time they had been imparted the rest were clustering around the gangway; while five minutes later Jimmy leaned on the rail watching the boats slide away toward the dusky city. Then he climbed to his bridge, and the windlass commenced to rattle, but he did not know that Anthea Merril, who heard his farewell whistle, kept the others waiting on the wharf a moment or two while she watched the Shasta slowly steam out to sea.
CHAPTER XIV
IN DISTRESS
The clear night was falling when Jimmy leaned on the bridge-rails as the Shasta steamed out of the Inlet beneath a black wall of pines. Over her port quarter the pale lights of the climbing city twinkled tier on tier, with dim forest rolling away behind them into the creeping mist. Beyond that, in turn, a faint blink of snow still gleamed against the dusky blueness of the east. All this was familiar, but he was leaving it behind, and ahead there lay an empty waste of darkening water, into which the Shasta pushed her way with thumping engines and a drowsy gurgle at the bows. It seemed to Jimmy, in one sense, appropriate that it should be so. He had cut himself adrift from all that he had been accustomed to, and where the course he had launched upon would lead him he did not know.
That, however, did not greatly trouble him. His character was by no means a complex one, and it was sufficient for him to do the obvious thing, which, after all, usually saves everybody trouble. It was clear that Tom Wheelock needed him, and he could, at least, look back a little, though this was an occupation to which he was not greatly addicted. He understood now how his father, who had perhaps never been a strong man, had slowly broken down under a load of debt that was too heavy for him, though the nature of the man who had with deliberate intent laid it on his shoulders was incomprehensible. Jimmy, in fact, could scarcely conceive the possibility of any man scheming and plotting to ruin a fellow-being for the value of two old schooners. The apparently insufficient motive made the thing almost devilish. Merril, he felt, was outside the pale of humanity, a noxious creature to be shunned or, on opportunity, crushed by honest men.
Then he wondered for a moment whether the bondholder's daughter had inherited any portion of her father's nature, and brushed the thought aside with a little involuntary shiver. The thing was out of the question. One could, he felt, perhaps illogically, be sure of that after a glance at her; and then he straightened himself with a little abrupt movement, for it was very clear that this was, after all, no concern of his. He had never met any woman who had made the same impression on him that Anthea Merril had done, but he had already decided that he had sense enough to prevent himself from thinking of her too frequently; and it was evident that if he had not he must endeavor to acquire it.
He strove to divert his thoughts, and listened to the flow of language that rose through the open skylights from the Shasta's engine-room. Taken together with the pungent smell of burning grease and a certain harsh thumping, it suggested that things were not going well down there. Then, looking forward, he watched the black figure of the look-out on the forecastle cut sharp and clean against the pale gleaming of the western sky as the bows swung over the long heave with a rhythmic regularity, for the Shasta was drawing out into open water now. She was making eight knots, he fancied, with mastheads swaying athwart the stars, and a long smoke-trail that was a little more solid than the dusky blue transparency streaking the sea astern of her. Jimmy pulled out his pipe when a faint cold breeze fanned his cheek, and lighted it contentedly, for a steamboat travels fastest in smooth water when what moving air there is blows against her, and there was every sign of fine weather.