"When he lost the _Fish-hawk_--that was 'most four years ago. Anyway, that was when I began to notice it. Then the cannery people put on their steamboat, and he couldn't keep the _Eagle_ going without their trade. She lay ashore in a bad berth with a big load of Wellington coal in her, and it cost him about a thousand dollars before she was fit for sea again. Things were slack that season, and he gave Merril a bond for the money. I guess that made the real trouble. Merril's a mighty hard man, and he has been putting the screw on him."
Jim Wheelock looked thoughtful. "A thousand dollars isn't such a great deal of money, after all. The old man seemed to have plenty of it when I left home."
"Well," said Prescott dryly, "it's quite certain he hasn't got it now, and I've more than a notion that there's a big bond on the _Tyee_. Why did he bring your sister Ellen back from Toronto?"
Jim Wheelock did not know. He had, in fact, once or twice asked himself the same question without finding an answer. His sister Eleanor, who was an ambitious and capable young woman, was now earning a pittance by teaching at a ranch near New Westminster; but she had never given him any reason in her letters for abandoning the studies she had gone East to pursue in Toronto.
"Anyway," said Prescott, "it's quite clear to me that your father needs a man with sense and snap to stand right behind him and see that he worries out of Merril's clutches. I don't know whether you can do it--I can't--I'm no use at business. Tom and I were always honest. Then, supposing you can do that, you're 'bout half-way through with the thing."
"'Bout that. Tom's been drifting to looard. You want to brace him sharp up on the wind again."
He broke off somewhat abruptly, for the scuttle slide in the deckhouse roof was flung back, and a man below lifted his head above it.
"Come right down and get your supper, Jimmy. Bob will take your wheel," he said.
Jimmy left the helm to Prescott, and with an effort he braced himself for the interview before him as he descended to the little stuffy cabin. It was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp that creaked as it swung, though the _Tyee_ was ploughing her way westward steadily as yet. A little stove made it almost intolerably hot, and the swirl of brine beneath the lee quarter filled it with a sound that was like the rattle of sliding gravel. Jimmy sat down, and ate the pork, potatoes, fresh bread, and desiccated apples set before him, which he surmised might be considered somewhat of a banquet on board the _Tyee_, and then he took out his pipe and turned toward his father as he filled his pannikin again with strong green tea. He had arrived in Vancouver only that afternoon, and they had had no time for conversation in the hurry of getting to sea.