"I make it a dead whale," said Brander.
"No whale," Noll argued. "Rides too high."
"It will be rotten," Brander insisted. "Swollen.... Full of putrid gas."
They watched a while longer, neither speaking. The light wind that urged them on was failing; the Sally slackened her pace, bit by bit; but her own momentum and some casual drift of the surface water still sent her toward the floating speck. It bulked larger in their glasses.
They were within a mile of it before Noll Wing shut his glass. "Aye, dead whale," he said disgustedly, and began to descend from the rigging. Brander dropped lightly after him. Noll stumped past the men at their stations by the boats till he came to Dan'l Tobey. "Dead whale," he told Dan'l. "Let it be."
Brander, at Noll's heels, asked: "Do we lower?"
Noll shook his head. "No," he said sharply. The disappointment, coming on the heels of the hope that had been roused, had made him fretful and angry. Brander said:
"I was thinking...."
Noll turned on him querulously. "Some ships have truck with carrion and dog meat," he snarled. "Not the Sally. I'll not play buzzard."
Brander smiled. "It's not pleasant, I know.... But, aboard the Thomas Morgan, we got a bit of ambergris out of such a whale.... This one was lean, you saw.... It died of a sickness. That's the kind...."