The
Fortune of the Indies
CHAPTER I
INGRAMS PAST
RESTHAVEN looks, in many ways, much as it did a hundred years ago. Except that then there was a tall sailing-ship alongside every wharf, and there were brown Malay seamen singing, and very curious bales piled on the piers, wafting scents of tea and coffee and unknown spice across the New England sea-smell. And there were dark, lofty whaling-vessels, too, fitting out for their next long cruise into all the waters of the world; for in those days Resthaven boasted both the Eastern and the whaling trades. A very few of the old whalers still come in to the quiet harbor—bluff, square-rigged ships, too proud to install the steam-engines that would shorten their cruises but injure their long-cherished
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