Bellairs was ready
to go higher?"

I saw where he was coming. "Yes--and why shouldn't he?" said I. "Is that
the line?"

"That's the line, Loudon Dodd," assented Jim. "If Bellairs and his
principal have any desire to go me better, I'm their man."

A sudden thought, a sudden fear, shot into my mind. What if I had been
right? What if my childish pleasantry had frightened the principal away,
and thus destroyed our chance? Shame closed my mouth; I began
instinctively a long course of reticence; and it was without a word of
my meeting with Bellairs, or my discovery of the address in Mission
Street, that I continued the discussion.

"Doubtless fifty thousand was originally mentioned as a round sum," said
I, "or, at least, so Bellairs supposed. But at the same time it may be
an outside sum; and to cover the expenses we have already incurred for
the money and the schooner--I am far from blaming you; I see how needful
it was to be ready for either event--but to cover them we shall want a
rather large advance."

"Bellairs will go to sixty thousand; it's my belief, if he were properly
handled, he would take the hundred," replied Pinkerton. "Look back on
the way the sale ran at the end."

"That is my own impression as regards Bellairs," I admitted; "the point
I am trying to make is that Bellairs himself may be mistaken; that what
he supposed to be a round sum was really an outside figure."

"Well, Loudon, if that is so," said Jim, with extraordinary gravity of
face and voice, "if that is so, let him take the _Flying Scud_ at fifty
thousand, and joy go with her! I prefer the loss."

"Is that so, Jim? Are we dipped as bad as that?" I cried.

"We've put our hand farther out than we can pull it in again, Loudon,"
he replied. "Why, man, that fifty thousand dollars, before we get clear
again, will cost us nearer seventy. Yes, it figures up overhead to more
than ten per cent, a month; and I could do no better, and there isn't
the man breathing could have done as well. It was a miracle, Loudon. I
couldn't but admire myself. O, if we had just the four months! And you
know, Loudon, it may still be done. With your energy and charm, if the
worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you ran one of
your picnics; and we may have luck. And O man! if we do pull it through,
what a dashing operation it will be! What an advertisement! what a thing
to talk of and remember all our lives! However," he broke off suddenly,
"we must tr