Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/83

 much knowledge and material for thrilling books. Mark, it appeared, had decided to go along, in the engine-room—"just for larks."

"And a very good idea, too," said Mr. Bolliver. "I went to sea before I was grown, and to China when I was eighteen. How can you help yourself, Mark Ingram, I should like to know?"

The aunts shook their heads behind the tea-urn. Such ideas, though current in the Ingram family for generations, seemed somehow revolutionary now, in the twentieth century. Though they knew it to be a fact, taken as a matter of family history, you would have had difficulty in convincing them that when their brother, Mark, took command of the Gloria he was little more than a year older than their grand-nephew, Mark.

Mr. Bolliver would not accept the hospitality of Ingram mansion for the night. His room, he said, was engaged at the inn, and his bag was already there. So he took himself off down Chesley Street in the twilight—and if he could see, warped in to the rotting Ingram Wharf, a ghost ship of gossamer sails, ready to weigh