Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/37

 an investigation of his domain. Alan's room had at one time been almost as much cluttered with wireless apparatus, but his instruments were put away now, still with the war seal of the government upon them.

Both boys had inherited an abstract love of the sea and planned vaguely to follow it some day, but their love of it did not pervade them as did their sister's passion for ships of the Ingram trade. Mark was clever with his hands and head, and had some thought of being a ship-builder and waking the old yards of Resthaven to new life. Alan was more dreamy; he scribbled rather thrilling sea-yarns sometimes, and decided that he would write a book as good as "The Pilot" when he finished school. But much as they loved the sea, and unhappy as they would have been away from the harbor life which had filled all their years, neither of them, I think, had ever longed to stand in the first Mark's stead on the quarter-deck of the Fortune. They would far rather have stood on the bridge of a dreadnaught—the thought of that really did wake the old sea-blood, all a-tingle for a new adventure.