Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/107

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A-MAYING
91

its ghostly associations) was evident to his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so, they could not fathom.

"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia said. "Are you going to sell her?"

"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in his pocket; "not I."

The patch in the Flying Dutchman was not such as a boat-builder would have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on the rocks like a madman.

He took the trial trip secretly—he did not intend to run the risk of sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and alder, till he