XX
A change was coming to pass in Faith at this time. As the strength flowed out of Noll, it seemed to flow into her. As Noll weakened, Faith was growing strong.
She had never lacked a calm strength of her own; the strength of a good woman. But she was acquiring now the strength and resolution of a man. At first, this was unconscious; the spectacle of Noll's degeneration moved her by the force of contrast. But for a long time she clung to the picture of the Noll of the past, clung to the hope that the captain would become again the man she had married. And so long as she did this, she made herself a part of him, his support.... She merged herself in him, thought of herself only as his helpmate.... She had always tried to stimulate his pride and strength; she had tried to lead him to reassume the domination of the Sally and all aboard her. And in the days before Noll went out to kill his whale, she thought for a time she had succeeded.
But when Noll came back to her that day, exhausted by the struggle, the fire gone out of him, Faith perceived that he was a weak vessel, cracking and breaking before her eyes.
Noll was gone; he was no longer a man. His hands and his heart had not the force needed to enable him to command the Sally, to make the voyage successful, to bring the bark safely back to port in the end. Faith saw this; but she refused to consider the chance of failure. She had married Noll when he was at the height of his apparent strength; the signs of his disintegration were not yet apparent. They had swept upon him suddenly.... But she would not have it said of him, when he was gone, that he had sailed the seas too long; that he had failed at last, and shamefully....
She had come to look upon the success of this last voyage of Noll's as a sacred charge; and when Noll's shoulders weakened, she prepared deliberately to take the burden on her own. The Sally must come safely home, with filled casks for old Jonathan Felt; she must come safely home, no matter what happened to Noll—or to herself. The prosperity of the Sally Sims was almost a religion to Faith....
She had begun to study navigation more to pass the long and dreary days than from any other motive; she applied herself to it now more ardently. And she began, at the same time, to study the men about her; to weigh them; to consider their fitness for the responsibilities that must fall upon them. The fo'm'st hands, and particularly the mates, she weighed in the balance. The mates, and above all Dan'l Tobey. For if Noll were to go, Dan'l, by all the ancient laws of the sea, would become master of the ship; and their destinies would lie in his hands....
Short of the Solander Grounds, they struck good whaling, and lingered for a time; and day by day the tuns and casks were filled, and the Sally sank lower in the water with her increasing load. They were two-thirds full, and not yet two years out. Good whaling.... At dinner in the cabin one day, Dan'l Tobey said to Faith: