He leaped toward her, roaring; and Faith waited till he was within six feet of her, then shot him carefully through the knee. He fell on his face at her feet, howling.
At the same time, Brander got home a blow that silenced his last antagonist, and a great quiet settled down upon the Sally Sims.
XXIX
What shadows remained, Roy was able to clear away. Roy, who had hated Brander, and who had hated Faith, yet in whom lived a strain of true blood that could not but answer to these two in the end. The evil in Dan'l had been writ in his face for any man to see, when Roy found him clutching Faith; and Roy was not blind.
The boy abased himself; he was pitifully ashamed. Still hoarse from the choking Dan'l had given him, he told how he had stolen the whiskey at the man's bidding.... A little at first; a ten-gallon keg in the end.... Told how he had himself filled Brander's boat jug with the liquor, and hidden a bottle in Mauger's bunk, and lied to old Tichel in the matter. Told the whole tale, and made his peace with them, while Faith and Brander watched each other over the boy's sobbing head with eloquent eyes....
For the rest; Silva was dead, and they buried him in the sand of the beach. Mauger had a shallow knife slit along his ribs; Willis Cox had a broken jaw. The others had suffered nothing worse than bruises, save only Dan'l Tobey. Dan'l's knee was smashed and splintered, and he lay in a stupor in the cabin, Willis watching beside him.
Those who had fled to the boats came shamedly back at last; and Faith and Brander met them at the rail, and Faith spoke to them. They had done wrong, she told them; but there was a chance of wiping out the score by bending to the toil she set them. They were already sick of adventuring; they swarmed aboard like homesick boys. She and Brander told them what to do, and drove them to it....
Before that day was gone, they had half her load out of the Sally; and at full tide that night, with every hand tugging at a line or breasting a capstan bar, they hauled her off. She slid an inch, two inches, four.... She moved a foot, three feet.... They freed her, by sheer power of their determination that she must come free. They dragged her full ten feet before the suction of the sand beneath her keel began to slack, and ten feet more before she floated free.... Then the boats lowered, and towed her safe off shore, and anchored her there.