“Eric tried to speak, and saw one of the men by the tryworks grinning at him; so he went forward and drove the man with blows to the knight’s heads, and Joan scorned him for days thereafter.
“I’ve seen a cock pa’tridge ruffle his feathers and beat and drum with his wings, all glory and strength and vigor in his wooing; and no doubt the hen liked it. But if the pa’tridge had tried such measures in the courting of a singing thrush, he would only have frighted and dismayed her whom he sought to please. It was so with Eric. His courting would have pleased some women; Joan it but disgusted and disturbed.
“‘Eric Scarf and I were closer friends than you would think; and I knew the big, strong man to be as shy and as easy to take hurt as a child. But it was his way when he was hurt or shamed to strike out at the nearest, and so to those without understanding he seemed a mere bully, cruel and exultant in his strength.
“Lucky for us on the Pownal, Scarf delighted in the whaling. There was no other task in the world so fitted to the man. So strong he was that nothing short of a whale could give him the fierce joy of battle which soothed him. He drove his men as he drove himself, and they either broke under it or became hard-bitten and enduring hands, fit to match him. His boat was always first away; and he would strike and kill one whale and then another while other officers were content with a single catch. I’ve known him to do what few attempt: to lower at night when moonlight revealed a spout, and make his kill, and tow the fish to the ship by dawn. Cap’n Tobbey never interfered with Eric, for the mate was too valuable; and when the mate’s watch was on deck, he would lower and kill without ever calling the Old Man from his cabin at all.
“I had heard of Scarf before this v’y’ge, but never watched him work before; and many a time I found myself biting my lip and holding the breath in my chest at the daring of him. In any weather short of a gale, he would lower; and once two boats were swamped in lowering before he took the third mate’s and got away—and got the whale.
“With such an officer, and decent luck, a quick voyage was sure; and so it was this time. Before we’d been out two years, the casks were filled, oil was stored in everything that would hold it, and the Old Man gave the word to fly the Blue Peter and put for home. We threw the bricks of the tryworks overboard to lighten ship that much, and struck across the South Pacific, fought our way around the Horn, and took a long slant north’ard toward Tristan.
“There was no place to store more oil if we had it, and we could not try out if we had the blubber; so, though we sighted fish now and then, we let them go—though I could see Eric was fretting at it, and wishing the ship empty again.
“For months now, Eric had been wooing Joan in his own wild, longing way; but the girl would have none of him. He must have known it, and he bridled his tongue as he could. But the word was bound to come some day; and it came at last when we were rocking in a calm, with an island two or three miles to starboard, and the sun hissing on the sea that sighed and swelled like the bosom of a sleeping woman whose dreams are troubled and disturbed.
“The ship was idle, the men squatting forward in what shade they could discover, and the rigging slatting back and forth as the Pownal rocked on the long swells. Eric had the deck, the Old Man was asleep below, and Joan and the boy, Jem, were sitting aft, the girl sewing at something she held in her lap.
“Scarf, with nothing in the world to do, fretted and paced about, his eyes never leaving her, and a worship in them that all the world could see. The afternoon droned away, the Pownal creaked and swung in the cradle of the sea, and the sun burned down endlessly. Scarf could not bear it. He strode across to where the girl sat; and she looked up at him to see what he had come for, and at the look in his eyes rose quickly to face him, her face setting hard.