Carroll changed the subject.
"It might have been better if you had made the directors' qualification higher. You would have been more sure of Horsfield then, because he would have been less likely to do anything that might depreciate the value of his stock."
"I had to get a few good names to make it easier for men of standing to join me. They wouldn't have been willing to subscribe for too many shares until they saw how the thing would go. Anyhow, so long as he's a director, Horsfield must hold a stipulated amount of stock. He's actually holding a good deal."
"The limit's rather a low one. Suppose he sold out down to it; he wouldn't mind having the value of the rest knocked down, if he could make more than the difference by some jobbery. Of course, we're only a small concern, and we'll have to raise more capital sooner or later. I've an idea that Horsfield might find his opportunity then."
"If he does, we must try to be ready for him," Vane replied. "I sat up most of last night with the spritsail sheet in my hand, and I'm going to sleep."
He strolled away to the tent they had pitched on the edge of the bush, but Carroll sat a while smoking beside the fire with a thoughtful face. He was suspicious of Horsfield and foresaw trouble; more particularly now that his comrade had undertaken a project which seemed likely to occupy a good deal of his attention. Hitherto, Vane had owed part of his success to his faculty of concentrating all his powers upon one object.
They rose at dawn the next morning, and by sunset had fitted the new planks. Two days later, they sailed northward, and eventually they found the rancherie Hartley mentioned. They had expected to hire a guide there, but the rickety wooden building was empty. Vane decided that its Siwash owners, who made long trips in search of fish and furs, had left it for a time, and he pushed on again.
He had now to face an unforeseen difficulty; there were a number of openings in that strip of coast, and Hartley's description was of no great service in deciding which was the right one. During the next day or two, they looked into several bights, and seeing no valleys opening out of them, went on again. One evening, however, they ran into an inlet with a forest-shrouded hollow at the head of it. Here they moored the sloop close in with a sheltered beach and after a night's rest got ready their packs for the march inland. Carroll regretted they had not hired the Indians with whom his comrade had crossed the straits.
"We would have traveled a good deal more comfortably if you had brought those Siwash along to pack for us," he observed.
"If you had been with them on the canoe trip, you might think differently," Vane answered with a laugh. "Besides, they're in the habit of going to Cornox and might put some enterprising lumber men on our trail."