The Sea Bride

by Ben Ames Williams

Save for one day, a single day.... A day when Faith called Brander to her on the deck and spoke to him.... A single day, that would have been, but for the strength of Faith, the bloody destruction of them both.

This incident was the climax of two trains of events, extending over days.... Extending, in the one case, back to that first day when Dan'l had roused the brand of jealousy in Noll to flame. Dan'l had never let that flame die out. He fanned it constantly; and when he saw in Faith's eyes, after the matter of Roy's first theft of the whiskey, that she had guessed his part in it, he threw himself more hotly into his intrigue. He kept at Noll's side whenever it was possible; he whispered....

He spoke openly of Brander's fondness for the men, of Brander's habit of talking with them so constantly. Faith heard him strike this vein, again and again.... He harped upon it to Noll, seeming to defend Brander at the same time that he accused.... He played upon the strain until even Faith's belief in Brander was shaken. There was always the matter of the ambergris. Brander might have ended it with a word, but he would not give Dan'l Tobey that satisfaction. He would not say, forthright, that the 'gris belonged to the Sally.... And Dan'l magnified this matter, and many others.... Until even Faith found it hard not to doubt the fourth mate.... She caught herself, more than once, watching him when he laughed and talked with the men. Was there need of that? Why did he do it? She could find no answer....

Noll feared Brander more and more; and Dan'l covertly taunted the captain with this fear. He roused Noll, time on time, to flagging gusts of rage; but always these passed in words.... And Noll fell back into his lethargy of drink again. Dan'l began to fear there was not enough man left in Noll to act.... He turned his guns on Faith, accusing her as he accused Brander....

But words were light things. Noll, moved though he might be, had in his heart a trust in Faith which Dan'l found it hard to shake. He might never have shaken it, had not luck favored him.... And this luck came to pass on the day Faith sought speech with Brander.

That move, on Faith's part, was the result of an increasing peril in the fo'c's'le. The men were getting drink again.

This began one day when a fo'm'st hand came aft to take the wheel and old Tichel smelled the liquor on him, and saw that the man's feet were unsteady, and flew into one of his tigerish fits of rage.... He drove the man forward with blows and kicks; and he came aft with his teeth bared and flamed to Noll Wing, and men were sent for and questioned. Three of them had been drinking. They were badly frightened; they were sullen; nevertheless, in the end, under old Tichel's fist, one of them said he had found a quart bottle, filled with whiskey, in his bunk the night before.... Tichel accused him of stealing it; the man stuck to his tale and could not be shaken.

The men could not come at the stores through the cabin; there was always an officer about the deck or below. Tichel thought they might have cut through from the after 'tween decks, and the stores were shifted in an effort to find such a secret entrance to the captain's stores. But none was found; there was no way....

Three days later, there was whiskey forward again. Found, as before, in a bunk.... Two men drunk, rope's endings at the rail.... But no solution to the mystery.

Two days after that, the same thing; four days later, a repetition. And so on, at intervals of days, for a month on end. The whiskey dribbled forward a quart at a time; the men drank it.... And never a trace to the manner of the theft.