Edith Ballinger Price

“ Jane closed the log-book and sat looking out into the waking garden—just where Great-grandfather Mark had sat and looked and smiled a straight blunt smile as he thought of dragon-junks with peacocks' eyes at the prow and cargoes of mandarin silk and jade and jewels.
Mr. Bolliver, Jane thought, must possess some sort of Oriental magic. For who but he could have won the aunts to even a half-hearted consent that the boys should set out? The spring days passed like an extraordinary dream—all the everyday commonplace life was laced with a mystic network of preparation and excitement. ”

“ Jane asked, her eyes steadily on his face.
"Business," said Mr. Bolliver; "troublesome business, my dear."
"I can't tell her now," he muttered later, striding fiercely up and down the deck. "Shanghai may have better news. There'll be time before then for much to happen. And if she must know, the tidings will be no more terrible then than now."
But Mr. Bolliver thought that in all his long and hard-fought life he had never had a greater task than to keep an unruffled spirit for Jane, who, with the light come back to her eyes, was counting the hours to Shanghai. ”

“ Suddenly, as never before, he felt the stir of the Ingram sea-blood. His grandfather, his great-grandfather, had weathered worse gales than this in ships the Delphian could stow in her cargo-hold. They had mastered great winds with matchless seamanship, challenged them with split canvas, and driven through ice-bound Antarctic seas under bare poles. All at once the Delphian seemed a poor thing, cringing helpless, with nothing to aid her, now that her engine was still. Alan suddenly understood some of Jane's proud disdain for steam and felt a kindling flash of sympathy for her dreams. ”