Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/278

266 see it. However, we're evidently eternally busted now, Joan."

"You really think it would be no use staying on Tao Tao?" the girl asked with eyebrows raised.

"I'm sure of it," her brother replied. "It's been touch and go for some time, but there's no question about it now. In a way, I'm not sorry this has happened. I didn't seem to have the pluck to cut my losses and clear out so long as there was any reasonable chance of getting some of our money back. Now we're being pitchforked out of it, which relieves me of responsibility in trying to come to a decision."

"I think you're right—in fact I'm sure you are," Keith put in. "Practically you'd have to start all over again here, and as likely as not some time in the next two or three years the same thing would happen again. It seems to me your only problem is, what are you going to do? You've got the ketch. That's about your only real asset, but it's a home, of a kind, and travelling is cheap that way. Of course it isn't any of my business, but—"

"Don't be an ass, Keith," said Chester. "We're under no end of an obligation to you as it is, and I don't see how I'm ever to wipe that off. Suggestions are welcome. Fire ahead."

Keith puffed at his pipe in silence for a while, allowing a particularly vicious crash of thunder to spend itself and roll away into the distance.