Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/140

 for her dreams. He cried out aloud, incoherently, for wilder adventure, and the chief wireless man, who knew it to be his first voyage, said:

"Steady, lad! "We're not at all done for."

Alan glared at him pityingly, but said nothing, for he did not, himself, understand his curious sense of exaltation.

At last the engine-room bell tinkled hopefully, there was a shudder and swirl as the screw turned slowly over, and the crippled engine took up its heavier work. Little by little the Delphian swung, till wind and sea were a few points on her bow and she lifted confidently, reassured. Her engines were going just enough to give her steerage way, and so she crawled through the night, now paling to morning, without trying to do more than keep out of harm's way.

Day broke over a sea still vastly shaken by the storm, but growing gradually more calm under a brightening sky. The piling rollers stretched over a limitless waste—astern, ahead, abeam—a huge, silent, swinging sea, with the Delphian all alone in the middle of it. She had settled to her work now, making the