Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/32

 the Fortune of the Indies filled away and shimmered out to sea.

But it was not many years before the little Mark went to, sea, too,—first as boy and then as mate, till at last the child who had watched the new sails set took command of the Gloria when he was scarcely out of his teens, as men did in those fine old days. So father and son, each in his own ship, sailed out of Resthaven to far ports.

On the cruise before his last, Great-grandfather Mark fashioned, in long hours of trade-wind idleness, a model of the ship he loved. It was a very beautiful thing. Jane had never seen it, but she knew that it was beautiful. For the man who could have fashioned in his mind the Fortune herself could surely build a perfect model of her. He had brought the little ship home; his wife had installed it above the parlor mantel. His daughters, Ellen and Lucia, remembered it dimly; they were very little girls when both ship and model were lost.

Of the last cruise of the Fortune of the Indies there is no log, for it went down with her and her master. But there is an agitated entry in