Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/118

 not a very jolly place, he decided. He was glad to come back to the bright engine-room, to the big, stamping engines, and the hot, common-place figures of his comrades on watch.

The engine-room, on a summer night, is not the coolest of places. It is not quite so hot as the fire-room, Mark reflected philosophically, but he decided that he was nearly as warm and active as the crossheads, and quite as oily. He went on deck at four o'clock, when the morning watch was called, and stood for a little while at the rail before turning in. There was not a star, not a gleam from the Delphian's wake—nothing but a blanket of moist cool darkness filled with the whisper of the ship's way. He glanced up at the wireless-room and wondered if Alan was off watch or on, and at the dark wheel-room, where the silent quartermasters were pointing the Delphian on down the coast. Mark walked across the deck to the starboard side and saw, far off, the fixed white gleam of a lighthouse, and wondered what light it was and how far on her way to Shanghai the Delphian had churned. Then, yawning tremendously, he tumbled to his own little cubicle, where his shore-clothes, not yet in their looker,