"Two hundred boys at six pounds a year means thirty-six hundred
pounds--that's the main item."
"My, how cheap labour does mount up! Thirty-six hundred pounds, eighteen
thousand dollars, just for a lot of cannibals! Yet the place is good
security. You could go down to Sydney and raise the money."
He shook his head.
"You can't get them to look at plantations down there. They've been
taken in too often. But I do hate to give the place up--more for
Hughie's sake, I swear, than my own. He was bound up in it. You see, he
was a persistent chap, and hated to acknowledge defeat. It--it makes me
uncomfortable to think of it myself. We were running slowly behind, but
with the _Jessie_ we hoped to muddle through in some fashion."
"You were muddlers, the pair of you, without doubt. But you needn't sell
to Morgan and Raff. I shall go down to Sydney on the next steamer, and
I'll come back in a second-hand schooner. I should be able to buy one
for five or six thousand dollars--"
He held up his hand in protest, but she waved it aside.
"I may manage to freight a cargo back as well. At any rate, the schooner
will take over the _Jessie's_ business. You can make your arrangements
accordingly, and have plenty of work for her when I get back.
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