XXV
A curious lull settled down upon the Sally Sims during the days after Noll's open accusation of Faith, and his collapse before her steady courage. There was an apathy in the air; they saw few whales, lowered for them without zeal, missed more than one that should have been killed.... There was a silence upon the ship, like the hush of listening men who wait to hear an expected call. This paralysis gripped every soul aboard—save Noll Wing alone.
Noll, in those last days, stalked his deck like a parody of the man he once had been. Faith had put a fictitious courage in the man; he thought himself once more the master, as in the past. His heels pounded the planks; his head was high; his voice roared.... But there was a tremor in his stride; there was a trembling about the poise of him; there was a cracking quaver in his voice. He was like a child who plays at being a man.... They humored him; the men and the mates seemed to enter into a conspiracy to humor him. They leaped to his bidding; they shrank from his curses as though desperate with fear.... And Noll was so delighted with all this that he was perpetually good-natured, jovial....
He was, of course, drinking heavily and steadily; but the drink seemed to hearten him and give him strength. Certainly it made him lenient; for on three occasions when the men found a bottle, forward, and befuddled themselves with it, Noll only laughed as though at a capital jest. Noll laughed.... But Faith wondered and was distressed and watched to see how the liquor was being stolen. She was disturbed and alarmed; but Noll laughed at her fears.
"A little of it never hurt a man," he told her boastfully. "Look at me, to see that. Let be, Faith. Let be."
When she protested, he overrode her; and to show his own certainty of himself, he did a thing that Noll sober would never have done. He had the rum drawn from the barrel in his storeroom and served out to the men, a ration daily.... It amused him to see the men half fuddled with it. He forced it on them; and once, while Faith watched hopelessly, he commanded a hulking Cape Verder—the biggest man in the fo'c's'le—to drink a bout with him. They took glass for glass, till the other was helpless as a log; and Noll vaunted his own prowess in the matter.
Dan'l Tobey contented himself with the progress of these matters; he no longer stuck a finger in the pie. Noll was going; that was plain to any seeing eye. The captain grew weaker every day; his skin yellowed and parched, and the lower lids of his eyes sagged down and revealed the flaming red of their inner surface. These sagging lower lids made crescent-shaped pockets which were forever filled with rheumy fluid.... Noll was an ugly thing; and his perpetual mirth, his cackling laughter were the more horrible.... He was a laughing corpse; dissolution was upon him. But he kept himself so steeped with alcohol he did not feel its pangs.
Faith could do nothing; Brander could do nothing. Between these two, no further word had passed. But there was no need. Meeting face to face on deck, the day after Noll surprised them, their eyes met in a long and steady glance.... Their eyes met and spoke; and after that there was no need of words between them. There was a pledging of vows in that glance; there was also a renunciation. Both saw, both understood.... Faith thought she knew Brander to the depths....
Neither, in that moment, knew that Dan'l Tobey was at hand; but the mate had seen, and he had understood. He saw, slipped away, held his peace, considered.