Aaron drove home a nail, and with his punch set it flush with the soft wood. “There was some drunken crew, shouting and screeching a mile up the beach,” he said. “Some few of them came off to us with fruit. The sober ones. ’Twas them Mark Shore went to pandander with.”
“He went to them?” Joel echoed. Aaron nodded.
“Aye. That he did.”
There was a long moment of silence before Joel asked huskily: “But was it like that he should stay with them freely?” For it is a black and shameful thing that a captain should desert his ship. When he had asked the question, he waited in something like fear for the carpenter’s answer.
“It comes to me,” said Aaron slowly at last, “that you did not well know your brother. Ye’d only seen him ashore. And—I’m doubting that you knew all the circumstances of his departure from this ship.”
“I know that he went ashore,” said Joel. “Went ashore, and left his men, and departed; and I know that they searched for him three weeks without a sign.”
Aaron sat back on his heels, and rubbed the smooth head of his hammer thoughtfully against his dry old cheek. “I’m not one to speak harm,” he said. “And I’ve said naught, in the town. But—you have some right to know that Mark Shore was not a sober man when he left the ship. I’ truth, he had not been sober—cold sober—for a week. And he left with a bottle in his coat.” He nodded his gray old head, eyes not on Joel, but on the hammer in his hand. “Also, there was a pearling schooner in the lagoon, with drunk white men aboard.”
He glanced sidewise at Joel then, and saw the Captain’s cheek bones slowly whiten. Whereupon old Aaron bent swiftly to his task, half fearful of what he had said. But when Joel spoke, it was only to say quietly:
“Asa should have told me this.”
Aaron shook his head vehemently, but without looking up from his task. “Not so,” he said. “There was no need the town should chew Mark’s name. Better—” He glanced at Joel. “Better if he were thought dead. Asa’s a good man, you mind. And—he knew your father.”