TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor printer's errors corrected.

THE SEA BRIDE

BY

BEN AMES WILLIAMS

AUTHOR OF

ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT

G R O S S E T & D U N L A P

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Published by Arrangement with The Macmillan Company

COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY BEN AMES WILLIAMS
COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1919.

THE SEA BRIDE

I

They were to be married before the open fire, in the big living-room of the old house on the hill. Upstairs, Bess Holt was helping Faith dress. Faith sat before the old, veneered dressing table with its little mirror tilting on the curved standards, and submitted quietly and happily to Bess's ministrations. Bess was a chatterbox, and her tongue flew as nimbly as the deft fingers that arranged Faith's veil. Faith was content; her soft eyes resting on her own image in the little mirror were like the eyes of one who dreams dreams and sees visions. She scarce heard Bess at all....

Only once she turned and looked slowly about this low-ceiled old room that had been her home: the high, soft bed, with its canopy resting on the four tall posts; the frame of that canopy was split in one place; she had wound it with wire to strengthen it. How many mornings, waking pleasantly as day stole in the little windows, she had seen that twist of wire first of all as her eyes opened. She used to look at it, and dream a little, before she rose.... One window, with its white hangings, was just at the foot of the bed. The cool, salt-laden winds from the sea used to whisper in there and soothe her sleep. She had always loved the sea. Would she always love it so, when there was nothing else but the sea on every hand?... When she should have sailed away with big Noll Wing....

The high chest of drawers, the little dressing table, the delicate chairs.... These were all old and familiar friends—whom she was leaving behind her. And she loved them, loved the ugly paper on the wall, loved the old daguerreotypes above the chest of drawers, loved the crooked sampler by the never-used fireplace. Loved them....

She smiled happily and confidently. She loved them ... but she loved big Noll Wing better. She would not regret....

Below stairs, her father, Jem Kilcup, talked with Dr. Brant, the minister. They spoke of wind and weather, as men do whose lives lie near the sea. They spoke of oil, of ships, of tedious cruises when the seas were bare of whales.... The minister marked the old harpoon that stood in the corner by the fire, and Jem told how with that battered iron he had struck his last whale, a dozen years before.... A good tale. The whale fought hard, left Jem with a crushed chest that drove him from the sea. Their talk wandered everywhere save where their thoughts were; they did not speak of Faith, nor of Noll Wing. Jem could not bear to speak of his girl who was going from his arms to another's; the minister understood, and joined with him in a conspiracy of silence. Only, when Bess came whispering down to say that. Faith was ready, old Jem gripped Dr. Brant's arm and whispered harshly into the minister's ear: "Marry them tight, and marry them hard, and true, Doctor. By God...."

Dr. Brant nodded. "No fear, my friend," he said. "Faith is a woman...."

"Aye," said Jem hoarsely. "Aye; and she's made her bed. God help her."

Things began to stir in the big house. Noll Wing was in the back room with Henry Ham, who had sailed with him three voyages, and would back him in this new venture. Young Roy Kilcup had found them there.... Old Jem had a demijohn of cherry rum, thirty years unopened. He sent it in to Noll.... And Noll Wing smacked his lips over it cheerfully, and became more amiable than was his custom. Roy Kilcup caught him in this mood and took quick vantage of it. When the three came in where Jem and Dr. Brant were waiting, Roy crossed and gripped his father's arm. "I'm going," he whispered. "Cap'n Wing will take me, as ship's boy. He's promised, dad."

Old Jem nodded. His children were leaving him; he was past protesting.

"I'm ready," Roy told his father. "I'm going to pack, right after they're married." He saw Dr. Brant smile, and whispered: "Be quick as you can, sir."

The minister touched the boy's shoulder reassuringly. "Quiet, Roy," he said. "There's time...."

People were gathering in the living-room from the other parts of the house. They came by twos and threes. The men were awkward and uneasy, and strove to be jocular; the women smiled with tears in their eyes. When one woman surrenders herself to one man, all women weep. Bess Holt, alone, did not weep. She was to play the organ; she sat down upon the stool and spread her pretty, soft skirts about her, and looked back over her shoulder to where Jem stood, in the hall, at the stair foot. He was to sign to her when Faith was ready. Dr. Brant crossed and stood beside the fireplace where the logs were laid, ready for the match. Noll Wing and Henry Ham took stand with him. Ham, the mate, was a big man, and an awkward one. His high collar irked him; his perilously shaven chin moved restlessly back and forth in the effort to ease his tortured throat. He coughed sepulchrally; and a woman giggled in the stillness, and wept quietly into her handkerchief.

Cap'n Noll Wing stood easily, squarely upon his spread legs. He, too, was a big man; his chest swelled barrel-like; his arms stretched the sleeves of his black coat. Cap'n Wing was seldom seen without a cap upon his head. Some of those in that room discovered in this moment for the first time that he was bald. The tight, white skin upon his skull contrasted unpleasantly with the brown of his leather cheeks. The thick hair about his ears was tinged with gray. Across his nose and his firm cheeks, tiny veins drew lacy patterns of purple. Garnished in wedding finery, he was nevertheless a man past middle life, and no mistaking. A man almost as old as Jem Kilcup, and wedding Jem Kilcup's daughter. An old man, but a man, for all that; stout, and strong, and full of sap. He had the dignity of mastery; he had the bearing of a man accustomed to command and be obeyed. Roy Kilcup watched this man with eyes of worship.

Bess, watching over her shoulder, saw old Jem look up the stairs, then turn and nod awkwardly to her. She pressed the keys, the organ breathed, the tones swelled forth and filled the room. Still, over her shoulder, she watched the door, as did every other eye. They saw Faith appear there, by her father's side; they saw her hand drop lightly on his arm. Jem moved; his broad shoulders brushed the sides of the door. He brought his daughter in, and turned with her upon his arm toward where Noll Wing was waiting.

Faith's eyes, as she came through the door, swept the room once before they found the eyes of Cap'n Wing and rested there. That single glance had shown her Dan'l Tobey, behind the others, near the window; and the memory of Dan'l's face played before her as she moved toward where Noll waited. Poor Dan'l. She pitied him as women do pity the lover they do not love. She had been hard on Dan'l. Not her fault; but still the truth. Hard on Dan'l Tobey.... And misery dwelt upon his countenance, so that she could not forget, even while she went to meet Noll Wing before the minister.

Janie Cox dropped her handkerchief and dove for it desperately, as Faith and Jem passed where she stood. Janie's swift movement was outrageously conspicuous in that still room. Faith looked toward her, and saw poor Janie crimson with embarrassment, and smiled at her comfortingly.

When she looked forward again, she found herself at Noll Wing's side, and Dr. Brant was already speaking....

When they made their responses, Noll in his heavy voice of a master, and Faith in the level voice of a proud, sure woman, her eyes met his and promised him things unutterable. It is this speaking of eyes to eyes that is marriage; the words are of small account. Faith pledged herself to Noll Wing when she opened her eyes to him and let him look into the depths of her. A woman who loves wishes to give. Faith gave all herself in that gift of her quiet, steady eyes. Cap'n Wing, before them, found himself abashed. He was glad when the word was said, when the still room stirred to life. He kissed Faith hurriedly; he was a little afraid of her. Then the others pressed forward and separated them, and he was glad enough to be thrust back, to be able to laugh, and jest, and grip the hands of men.

The women, and some of the men, kissed Faith as she stood there, hanging on her father's arm. Her eyes flickered now and then toward Noll, her Noll Wing now. But she could not always be watching him. Too many others came to speak with her. Dan'l Tobey came; Dan'l with his round moon-face, and his freckles, and his sandy hair.... Dan'l was only a little older than herself; a chubby, strong young man.... Little more than a boy, but a man, too.... Two cruises behind him.... He was going out as second mate with Cap'n Wing, this afternoon. Faith knew Dan'l loved her. She was pleasantly sorry, and at the same time secretly glad. No woman is completely sorry that she is beloved. Faith told herself she must help Dan'l get over it, on this cruise that was to come. She must.... She decided, while she spoke to him, that she must find a wife for Dan'l. What married woman is not a matchmaker? Faith had now been a married woman for seven minutes by the tall clock a-ticking in the corner....

Dan'l gave way to others; and Bess Holt cried in dismay, "Faith, the fire was never lighted!"

It was true. In the swift moments before Faith came downstairs, no one had remembered to touch a match to the kindling under the smooth, white birch logs in the great fireplace. When Faith saw this, she felt a sudden, swift pang of disappointment at her heart. She loved a fire, an open fire, merrily blazing.... She had always dreamed of being married before this great fire in her father's home. She herself had chosen these logs, and under her eye her brother Roy had borne them into the house and laid them upon the small stuff and kindling she had prepared. She had wanted that fire to spring to life as she and Noll were married; she had thought of it as a symbol of the new life that was beginning for Noll. She was terribly disappointed....

In that first pang, she looked helplessly about for Noll. She wanted comfort pitifully.... But Noll was laughing in the doorway, talking with old Jonathan Felt, the owner of his vessel. He had not heard, he did not see her glance. Bess Holt cried:

"Somebody light it quick. Roy Kilcup, give me a match. I'll light it myself. Don't look, Faith! Oh, what a shame...."

Roy knew how his sister had counted on that fire. "I'll bet Faith doesn't feel as though she were really married," he laughed. "Not without a fire going.... Do you, Faith? Better do it over, Dr. Brant...."

Some one said it was bad luck; a dozen voices cried the some one down. Then, while they were all talking about it, round-faced Dan'l Tobey went down on his knees and lighted the fire that was to have illumined Faith's wedding.

Faith, her hand at her throat, looked for Noll again; but he and old Jonathan had gone out to that ancient demijohn of cherry rum.... Dan'l was looking hungrily at her; hungry for thanks. She smiled at him. They were all pressing around her again....

It was little Bess Holt who set them moving, at last, down to the wharf. Bess was the stage manager that day; every one else was too busy with his or her own concerns. She whisked Faith away upstairs to change her dress, and scolded the others out of the house.... All save Jem Kilcup and Roy. Roy had packing of his own to do; he was flying at it like a terrier. Jem would stay as long as he might with Faith. Noll, and Jonathan Felt, and Noll's officers went to play host at the wedding supper on the decks of the Sally Sims....

Faith's luggage had already gone aboard. When she and Jem and Bess reached the wharf, the others were at the tables, under the boathouse, aft. They rose, and pledged Faith in lifted glasses.... Then Faith sat down beside her husband, at the head of the board, and old Jem settled morosely beside her. They ate and drank merrily.

Faith was very happy, dreamily happy. She felt the big presence of her husband at her side; and she lifted her head with pride in him, and in this ship which he commanded. He was a man.... Once or twice she marked her father's silence; and once she touched his knee with her hand lightly, in comfort.... Cap'n Wing made a speech. They called on Jem, but Jem was in no mind for chatter. They called on Faith; she rose, and smiled at them, and said how happy she was, and touched her husband's shoulder proudly....

Roy came, running, after a time.... And a little later, the tug whistled from the stream, and Cap'n Wing looked overside, and stood up, and lifted his hands.

"Friends," he said jocosely, "I'd like to take you all along. Come if you want. But—tide's in. Them as don't want to go along had best be getting ashore."

Thus it was ended; that wedding supper on the deck, in the late afternoon, while the flags floated overhead, and the gulls screamed across the refuse-dotted waters of the Harbor, and the tide whirled and eddied about the piles. Thus it was ended; their chairs scraped upon the deck; the boards that had been set upon boxes and trestles to make tables and seats were thrust aside or overturned. They swept about Faith, where she stood at her husband's side, arm linked in his, against the rail....

Old Jem kissed her first of all, kissed her roundly, crushing her to his breast; and she whispered, in his close embrace: "It's all right, dad. Don't worry.... All right.... I'll bring you home...."

He kissed her again, cutting short her promise. Kissed her, and thrust her away, and stumped ashore, and went stockily off along the wharf and out of sight, never looking back. A solitary figure; somewhat to be pitied, for all his broad shoulders and his fine old head.

The others in their turn, little Bess Holt last of all. Bess, now that her tasks were done, had her turn at tears. She wept happily in Faith's arms. Faith did not weep. She was too happy for even the happiest of tears. She patted Bess's brown head, and linked arms with the girl while Bess climbed to the wharf, and they kissed again, there....

Then every one waited, calling, laughing, crying, while the Sally Sims was torn loose from her moorings. Cap'n Wing was another man now; he was never a man to leave his ship to another, Faith thought proudly. His commands rang through the still air of late afternoon; his eye saw the hawsers cast off, saw the tug take hold....

The Sally Sims moved; she moved so slowly that at first one must watch a fixed point upon the wharf to be sure she moved at all. Roy was everywhere, afire with zeal in this new experience; his eyes were dancing. Faith stood aft, a little way from her husband, calling to those upon the wharf. The tug dragged the Sally stern first into the stream, headed her around....

Last calls, last cries.... The individual figures on the wharf's end slowly merged into one mass, a mass variegated by the black garments of the men, by the gayer fabrics which the women wore. This mass in turn, as the Sally slipped eastward toward the sea, became a dot of color against the brown casks which piled the wharf. Faith took her eyes from it to glance toward her husband; when she looked back it was hard to discover the dot again. Presently it was gone....

Men were in the rigging, now, setting the big, square sails. The wind began to tug at them. The voice of the mate, Mr. Ham, roared up to the men in profane commands. Cap'n Wing stood stockily on wide-spread legs, watching, joining his voice now and then to the uproar.

The sea, presently, opened out before them, inviting them, offering all its wide expanses to the Sally Sims' blunt bow. The Sally began to lift and tilt awkwardly. The tug had long since dropped behind; they shaped their course for where the night came up ahead of them.... They sailed steadily eastward, into the gathering gloom....

Cap'n Wing bawled: "Mr. Tobey." And Dan'l came aft to where Faith stood with her husband. He did not look at her, so that Faith was faintly disquieted. The captain pointed to the litter of planks and boxes and dishes and food where the wedding supper had been laid. Faith watched dreamily, happily.... She had loved that last gathering with her friends.... There was something sacred to her, in this moment, even in the ugly débris that remained....

But not to Cap'n Wing. He said harshly, in his voice of a master:

"Have that trash cleared up, Mr. Tobey. Sharp, now."

"Trash?" Faith was faintly unhappy at the word. Dan'l bawled to the men, and half a dozen of them came shuffling aft. She touched her husband's arm. "I'm going below, now, Noll," she whispered.

He nodded. "Get to bed," he said. "I'll be down."

He had not looked at her; he was watching Dan'l and the men. Her own eyes clouded.... Nevertheless, she turned to the cabin companion and went below.

II

For two weeks Faith had been aboard the Sally Sims, making ready the tiny quarters that were to be her home. When she came down into the cabin now, it was with a sense of familiarity. The plain table, built about the butt of the mizzenmast; the chairs; the swinging, whale-oil lamps.... These were old friends, waiting to replace those other friends she had left behind in her bedroom at home. She stood for a moment, at the foot of the cabin companion, looking about her; and she smiled faintly, her hand at her throat....

She was not lonely, not homesick, not sorry.... But her smile seemed to appeal to these inanimate surroundings to be good to her.

Then she crossed the cabin quietly, and went into the smaller compartment across the stern which was used by Cap'n Wing for his books, his instruments, his scant hours of leisure.... This ran almost entirely across the stern of the ship; but it was little more than a corridor. The captain's cabin was on the starboard side, opening off this corridor-like compartment. There was scant room, aft, aboard the Sally Sims. The four mates bunked two by two, in cabins opening off the main cabin; the mate had no room to himself. And by the same token, there was no possibility of giving Faith separate quarters. There were two bunks in the captain's cabin, one above the other. The upper had been built in, during the last two weeks. That was all....

Faith had not protested. She was content that Noll was hers; the rest did not matter. She found a measure of glory in the thought that she must endure some hardships to be at his side while her man did his work in the world. She was, after the first pangs, glad that she must make a tiny chest and a half a dozen nails serve her for wardrobe and dressing-room; she was glad that she must sleep on a thing like a shelf built into the wall, instead of her high, soft bed with the canopy at home. She was glad—glad for life—glad for Noll—glad for everything....

She began, quietly, to prepare herself for bed. And while she loosened her heavy hair, and began the long, easy brushing that kept it so glossy and smooth, her thoughts ran back over the swift, warm rapture of her awakening love for Noll. Big Noll Wing.... Her husband, now.... She, his bride....

She had always worshiped Noll, even while she was still a school girl, her skirts short, her hair in a long, thick braid. Noll was a heroic figure, a great man who appeared at intervals from the distances of ocean, and moved majestically about the little world of the town, and then was gone again. The man had had the gift of drama; his deeds held that element which lifted them above mere exploits and made them romance. When he was third mate of the old Bertha, a crazy Islander tried to knife him, and fleshed his blade in Noll Wing's shoulder, from behind. Noll had wrenched around and broken the man's neck with a twist of his hands. He had always been a hard man with his hands; a strong man, perhaps a brutal man. Faith, hearing only glorified whispers of these matters, had dreamed of the strength of him. She saw this strength not as a physical thing, but as a thing spiritual. No one man could rule other men unless he ruled them by a superior moral strength, she knew. She loved to think of Noll's strength.... Her breath had caught in ecstasy of pain, that night he first held her close against his great chest, till she thought her own ribs would crack....

Not Noll's strength alone was famous. He had been a great captain, a great man for oil. His maiden voyage as skipper of his own ship made that reputation for the man. He set sail, ran forthwith into a very sea of whales, worked night and day, and returned in three days short of three months with a cargo worth thirty-seven thousand dollars. A cargo that other men took three years to harvest from the fat fields of the sea; took three years to harvest, and then were like as not to boast of the harvesting. Oh, Noll Wing was a master hand for sperm oil; a master skipper as ever sailed the seas....

He came back thus, cruise after cruise, and the town watched his footsteps with pride and envy; he walked the streets with head high; he spoke harshly, in tones of command; he was, Faith thought, a man....

She remembered, this night, her first sight of him; her first remembered sight. It was when her father came home from his last voyage, his chest crushed, himself a helpless man who must lie abed long months before he might regain a measure of his ancient strength again. His ship came in, down at the wharves, at early dawn; and Faith and Roy, at home with their mother, had known nothing of the matter till big Noll Wing came up the hill, carrying Jem Kilcup in his arms as a baby is borne. Their mother opened the door, and Noll bore Jem upstairs to the bed he was to keep for so long.... And Faith and Roy, who had always seen in their father the mightiest of men, as children do, marveled at Noll Wing with wide eyes. Noll had carried their father in his arms....

Faith was eleven, then; Roy not much more than half as old. While Noll's ship remained in port, she and Roy had stolen down often to the wharves to catch a stolen sight of the great man; they had hid among the casks to watch him; they had heard with awe his thundering commands.... And then he sailed away. When he came again, Faith was thirteen; and she tagged his heels, and he bought her candy, and took her on his knee and played with her.... Those weeks of his stay were witchery to Faith. Her mother died during that time, and Noll was her comforter.... The big man could be gentle, in those days, and very kind....

He came next when Faith was sixteen; and the faint breath of bursting womanhood within her made Faith shy. When a girl passes from childhood, and feels for the first time the treasures of womanhood within herself, she guards that treasure zealously, like a secret thing. Faith was afraid of Noll; she avoided him; and when they met, her tongue was tied.... He teased her, and she writhed in helpless misery....

Nineteen at his next coming; but young Dan'l Tobey, risen to be fourth mate on that cruise with Noll, laid siege to her. She liked Dan'l; she thought he was a pleasant boy.... But when she saw Noll, now and then, she was silent before him; and Noll had no eyes to see what was in the eyes of Faith. He was, at that time, in the tower of his strength; a mighty man, with flooding pulses that drove him restlessly. He still liked children; but Faith was no longer a child. She was a woman; and Noll had never had more than casual use for women. He saw her, now and then; nothing more....

Nevertheless this seeing was enough so that Dan'l Tobey had no chance at all. Dan'l went so far as to beg her to marry him; but she shook her head.... "Wait ..." she whispered. "No. No.... Wait...."

"You mean—you will—some day?" he clamored. And she was frightened, and cried out:

"No, I don't mean anything, Dan'l. Please—don't ask me.... Wait...."

He told her, doggedly, the day he sailed away, that he would ask her again when he came home. And Faith, sure that she would never love Dan'l, was so sorry for him that she kissed him good-by; kissed him on the forehead.... The boy was blind; he read in that kiss an augury of good, and went away with heart singing. He did not know the philosophy of kisses. Let a girl permit a man to kiss her good-by—on cheek, or forehead, or ear tip, or hand, or lip, or what you will—and there's still a chance for him; but when she kisses him, sisterly, upon the forehead, the poor chap is lost and has as well make up his mind to't, Dan'l did not know, so went happily away....

Noll Wing, on that cruise, passed the great divide of life without knowing it. Till then he had been a strong man, proud in his strength, sufficient unto himself, alone without being either lonely or afraid; but when he came home, there was stirring in him for the first time a pang of loneliness.... This was the advance courier of age, come suddenly upon him.

He did not understand this; he was not even conscious of the change in him. He left his ship, and climbed the hill to his own house where his sister waited for him; and he submitted to her timid ministrations as he had never submitted before. He found it, somehow, faintly pleasant.... A woman, puttering about him.... But comfortable, just the same, he told himself. A man gets tired of men....

He had never tired of men before, never tired of himself before. Now there was something in him that was weary. He wanted comfort. He was worn with Spartan living; he was sick of rough life. He hungered for soft ways, for gentle things.... Some one to mend his socks.... Always wearing full of holes.... Some one to talk to, on ship board, besides the rough crew and the respectful officers....

This unrest was stirring in him when he went to see old Jem Kilcup, and Faith opened the door to him, and bade him come in.

He came in, tugging at his cap; and his eyes rested on her pleasantly. She was tall, as women go; but not too tall. And she was rounded, and strong, and firm. Her hair was thick, and soft; and her voice was low and full. When she bade him good evening, her voice thrummed some cord in the man. A pulse pricked faster in his throat....

He had come to see Jem; Jem was not at home. Faith told him this. In the old days, he would have turned and stamped away. Now he hesitated; then looked about for a chair, sat down. And Faith, who for the life of her could not hold still her heart when Noll Wing was near, sat in a chair that faced him, and they fell a-talking together.

He talked, as men will do, of himself. Nothing could have pleased Faith better. Nor Noll, for that matter.... He loved to talk of himself; and for an hour they sat together, while his words bore her across the seven seas, through the tumult of storm, through the bloody flurry of the fighting whale, through the tense silence of a ship where sullen men plan evil.... She trembled as she listened; not with fear for him, but with pride in him. She was already as proud of Noll as though he belonged to her.

Thus began their strange courtship. It was scarce conscious, on either side. Noll took comfort in coming to her, in talking to her, in watching her.... His pulses stirred at watching her. And Faith made herself fair for his coming, and made him welcome when he came....

She was his woman, heart and soul, from the beginning. As for Noll, he found her company increasingly pleasant. She was a better listener than a man; his tales were fresh and new to her. At the same time, knowing him better, she began to mother him in her thoughts, as women will. She began to mother him, and to guide him. Men need guiding, ever. Noll might never have known what he wanted; but Faith was no weak girl. She had the courage to reach out her hand for the thing that was dear to her; she was not ashamed of her heart....

They came together by chance one night when the moon played hide and seek with dark clouds in the sky; they met upon the street, as Faith came home with Bess Holt; and Noll walked with them to Bess's house, and then he and Faith went on together. She led him to talk of himself, as ever. When they came to her gate, some sudden impulse of unaccustomed modesty seized the man. He said hoarsely:

"But pshaw, Faith.... You must be sick of my old yarns by now...."

She was silent for a moment, there before him. Then she lifted her eyes, smiling in the moonlight, and she quoted softly and provokingly:

"'... She thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her....'"

Noll Wing was no man of little reading. He understood, and cried out hoarsely....

'Twas then, the moon providentially disappearing behind a cloud, that he caught her and held her till her ribs were like to crack, while his lips came fumbling down to find her own....

Afterward, Faith hid her eyes in shame, and scolded herself for frowardness until he reassured her; she bade him, then, pay court in due form, at her feet. He knelt before her, the big, strong man.... And her eyes filled, and she knelt with him.

It was in her heart that she was pledging herself sacredly, with this man, forevermore.

Followed the swift days of preparation; a pleasant flurry, through which Faith moved calmly, her thoughts far off. Old Jem Kilcup was wroth; he knew Noll Wing, and tried to tell Faith something of this knowledge. But she, proud and straight, would have none of it; she commanded old Jem into silence, then teased him into smiles till he consented and bade her take her man.

Roy was immensely proud of her. When it was decided that she should go away with Noll upon the Sally Sims, Roy begged to go. Begged fruitlessly, at first; for Noll Wing, having won the thing he wanted, was already beginning to wonder whether he really wanted it at all. But in the end, he consented.... Roy was to go with his sister....

Bess Holt.... Those were wild days for Bess; wild days of constant, fluttering excitement. She buzzed about Faith like a humming bird about a flower; and Faith quietly gave herself to the current of the days. She was so happy that even Dan'l Tobey could not cloud her eyes. There was one hot hour with Dan'l, when he accused, and swore, and begged. But Faith had strength in her, so that in the end she conquered him and held him.... He was silenced; only his eyes still accused her....

So.... Marriage! It was done, now. Done.... She was away, with Noll, the world and life before them.... Brave Noll; strong Noll.... She loved him so....

When he came down into the cabin, she was waiting for him. She had put on a dressing-gown, a warm and woolly thing that she and Bess had made of a heavy blanket, to protect her against the chill winds of the sea. Her braids were upon her shoulders; her hair parted evenly above her broad brow. Her eyes were steady and sweet and calm.... Noll, studying her while his heart leaped, saw where the dressing-gown parted at her throat a touch of white, a spray of broidered blossoms which Faith herself had made, with every stitch a world of hope and dreams....

He took off his cap, and his coat and vest. He wore suspenders. When Faith saw them, she shivered in spite of herself. They were such hopelessly ugly things.... She lifted her eyes from them, came closer to him. He took her roughly in his arms, and she lifted one arm and drew it around his thick neck, and drew his face down.

"Ah, Noll ..." she whispered proudly.

III

Faith Wing fitted easily into the life aboard the Sally Sims, as the whaler worked eastward before starting on the long southward slant that would bring her at last to her true hunting grounds. The mates saw her daily as a pleasant figure in the life of the cabin; the boat-steerers and the seamen and greenies caught glimpses of her, now and then, when she sat on deck with sewing, or a book, or with idle hands and thoughtful eyes. Faith, on her part, studied the men about her, and watched over Noll, and gave herself to the task of being a good wife and helpmate to him.

The first weeks of the cruise were arduous ones, as they are apt to be on a whaler; for of the whole crew, more than half were green hands recruited from the gutters, the farms, the slums.... Weak men, in many cases; rotted by wrong living; slack-muscled, jangle-nerved. Weak men who must be made strong; for there is no place for weakness in a whaler's crew.

It was the task of the mates to make these weaklings into men. The greenies must learn the rigging; they must learn their duties in response to each command; they must be drilled to their parts in the boats and prepared for the hunts that were to come. Your novice at sea has never an easy time of it; he learns in a hard school, and this is apt to be especially true upon a whaler. While the methods of the officers differed according to the habit of the officer, they were never gentle.

Cap'n Wing watched over all this, took a hand here and there. And Faith, quietly in the background, saw a new Noll, saw in each of the officers a man she had never seen ashore.

Noll was the master, the commander. When his voice bellowed along the decks, even the greenest man leaped and desperately strove in his efforts to obey. Noll was the dominant man; and Faith was pleasantly afraid of him and his roaring tones.... She loved being afraid of him....

There were four officers aboard the Sally Sims. These four, with Roy—in his capacity of ship's boy—lived with Noll and Faith in the main cabin. They were Faith's family. Big Henry Ham, the mate, was a man of slow wit but quick fist; a man with a gift of stubbornness that passed for mastery. The men of his watch, and especially the men of his boat, feared him acutely. He taught them this fear in the first week of the cruise, by the simple teachings of blows. Thereafter he relaxed this chastisement, but held a clenched fist always over their cowering heads. He had what passed for a philosophy of life, to justify this. When Faith asked him, pleasantly, one day, whether it was necessary to strike the men, he told her with ponderous condescension that no other measures would suffice.

"They've no proper brains at all, ma'am," he explained. "Their brains is all in their faces; and when they don't jump at the word, your fist in their mouth jumps them. And next time, they jump without it. That's the whole thing of it, ma'am."

And he added further: "They're children, ma'am." He smiled slyly. "When you've babies of your own, you'll understand. Take the switch to 'em, ma'am, till they learn what it is. Then they'll mind without, and things'll go all smooth."

He was, after a fashion, a Pecksniffian man, this Henry Ham. Faith did not like him, but she found it hard not to respect him. He was, after all, efficient.

Dan'l Tobey, the second mate, was a man of another sort. Faith was startled and somewhat amused to find what a difference there was between Dan'l afloat and Dan'l ashore. Ashore, he was a round-faced, freckled, sandy-haired boy with no guile in him; an impetuous, somewhat helpless and inarticulate boy. Afloat, he was a man; reticent, speaking little, speaking to the point when he spoke at all.... Shrewd, reading the character of his men, playing upon them as a musician plays upon his instruments. Of the five men in his boat, not one but might have whipped him in a stand-up fight. Nevertheless, he ruled them. This one he dominated by cutting and sarcastic words that left the man abashed and helpless; that one he flattered; another he joked into quick obedience.... The fourth, a surly giant who might have proved unmanageable, he gave into the keeping of his boat-steerer, a big Islander called Yella' Boy. He taught Yella' Boy to fear the man, provoked a fight between them in which the giant was soundly whipped, and thereafter used the one against the other and kept them both in balance eternally. Dan'l had, Faith decided, more mental ability than any man aboard—short of her Noll. He ruled by his wits; and this the more surprised her because she had always thought Dan'l more than a little stupid. She watched the unfolding of the new Dan'l with keenest interest as the weeks dragged by.

James Tichel, the third mate, was a thin little old man given to occasional bursts of tigerish rage in which he was the match for any man aboard. In his second week, he took the biggest man in his boat and beat him into a helpless, clucking wreck of bruises. Thereafter, there was no need for him to strike a second time. Faith wondered whether these rages to which the little man gave way were genuine, whether he gave way because he chose to do so. In the cabin, he was distinguished for a dry and acid wit. Faith did not like him, even when she guessed the secret fear of the little man that he was passing his usefulness, that he was growing too old to serve. He told her, once, in a moment of confidence, that he had sailed as third mate for fourteen years, and once as second....

"But never as mate; nor as skipper, ma'am," he mourned.

She tried to comfort him. "You will, some day," she told him. "Every man's chance must come...."

He chuckled acridly. "Aye—but what if he's dead afore it?"

Willis Cox was fourth mate. He was a youngster; this his first cruise in the cabin. He had been promoted from the fo'c's'le by Noll Wing on Noll's last voyage. By the same token, he worshiped Noll as a demigod, with the enthusiasm of youth; and a jealousy not unlike the jealousy of women made him dislike Faith, at first, and resent her presence aboard. No one could long dislike Faith, however. In the end, he included her in his worship of Noll, and gave her all his loyalty.

Roy, in these new surroundings, flourished. He was tireless, always stirring about the ship or clambering in the rigging, drinking in new impressions like a sponge. He and Faith, as is apt to be the case between brother and sister, fought each other constantly, bickering and striving back and forth. Faith had somewhat outgrown this way of childhood; but Roy was still a boy, and Faith felt toward him at times the exasperation which a mother feels toward a child. It came to pass, in the early stages of the voyage, that Roy included Noll Wing in his warfare against Faith; and he turned to Dan'l Tobey. Between Dan'l and the boy, a strange friendship arose, so that Faith often saw them talking together, Roy chattering while Dan'l listened flatteringly. Faith, ashore, had liked Dan'l; she was a little afraid of the new man he had become, since they sailed. Nevertheless, she was pleased that Roy liked him....

All these men had been changed, in subtle ways, by their coming to sea. Faith, during the first weeks, was profoundly puzzled and interested by this transformation. There was a new strength in all of them, which she marked and admired. At the same time, there were manifestations at which she was disquieted.

Noll Wing—her Noll—had changed with the rest. He had changed not only in his every-day bearing, but in his relations with her. She was troubled, from the very beginning, by these changes; and she was troubled by her own reactions to them.

Noll, for instance, liked to come down to his cabin in his times of leisure and take off his coat and vest and open his shirt at the throat and lie down. Sometimes he took off his shoes. Usually, at such times, he went to sleep; and Faith, who sometimes read aloud to him, would stop her reading when Noll began to snore, and look at her husband, and try to convince herself he was good to look upon. She learned to know, line by line, the slack folds of his cheeks when he lay thus, utterly relaxed. The meandering of the little purple veins beneath his skin fascinated her and held her eyes. There were little, stiff hairs in his ears, and in his nostrils; and where his shirt was open at the throat she could glimpse the dark growth upon his broad chest. His suspenders pressed furrows in the soft, outer covering of flesh which padded the muscles of his shoulders. He was, by habit, a cleanly man; but he was at the same time full-fleshed and full-blooded, and there was always about him a characteristic and not necessarily unpleasant odor of clean perspiration. At times, as she sat beside him while he slept thus, Faith tried to tell herself she liked this; at times it frankly revolted her, so that she was ashamed of her own revolt....

She had worshiped the strength of Noll; she was in danger of discovering that at too close range, that strength became grossness.

The pitiless intimacies of their life together in the cabin of the Sally Sims were hard for Faith. They shared two small rooms; and Noll must be up and down at all hours of day and night, when the weather was bad, or the business of whaling engrossed him. Faith, without being vain, had that reverence and respect for herself which goes by the name of modesty. Her body was as sacred to her as her soul. The necessity that they were under of dressing and undressing in a tiny room not eight feet long was a steady torment to her....

She did not blame Noll for what unhappiness there was in these matters; she blamed herself for over-sensitiveness, and tried to teach herself to endure these things as a part of her task of sharing the rigors of Noll's daily toil. But there were times when even the nakedness of Noll's bald head revolted her.

She had been, when she married, prepared for disillusionment. Faith was not a child; she was a woman. She had the wisdom to know that no man is a heroic figure in a night shirt.... But she was not prepared to discover that Noll, who walked among men as a master, could fret at his wife like a nervous woman.

This fretful querulousness manifested itself more than once in the early stages of the voyage. For Noll was growing old, and growing old a little before his time because he had spent his life too freely. He was, at times, as querulous as a complaining old man. Because he was apt to be profane, in these moods, Faith tried to tell herself that they were the stormy outbreaks of a strong man.... But she knew better. When Noll, after they lost their second whale, growled to her:

"Damn Tichel.... The man's losing his pith. You'd think a man like him could strike a whale and not let it get away...." Faith knew this was no mere outbreak against Tichel, but an out and out whine.

She knew this, but would not admit it, even in her thoughts.

Another matter troubled her. Noll Wing was a drinker. She had always known that. It was a part of his strength, she thought, to be able to drink strong liquor as a man should. But aboard ship she found that he drank constantly, that there was always the sickly sweet smell of alcohol about him.... And at times he drank to stupefaction, and slept, log-like, while Faith lay wide-eyed and ashamed for him in the bunk below his. She was sorry; but because she trusted in Noll's strength and wisdom, she made no attempt to interfere.

She had expected that marriage would shatter some of her illusions; and when her expectations were fulfilled and far exceeded, she thrust her unhappiness loyally behind her, and clung the closer to big Noll, striving to lend her strength to him.

More than once, when Noll fretted at her while others were about, she saw Dan'l Tobey's eyes upon her; and at such times she took care to look serene and proud. Dan'l must not so much as guess it, if Noll should ever make her unhappy....

But.... Noll make her unhappy? The very thought was absurd. He was her Noll; she was his. When they were wedded, she had given herself to him, and taken him as a part of herself, utterly and without reservation.

He might fail her high expectations in little things; she might fail him. But for all that, they were one, one body and soul so long as they both should live.

She was as loyal to him, even in her thoughts, as to herself. For this was Faith; she was Noll's forever.

She thought that what she felt was hidden; but Dan'l Tobey had eyes to see. And now and then, when in crafty ways he led big Noll to act unworthily before her, he watched for the shadow that crossed her face, and smiled in his own sly soul.

IV

There was, in Dan'l Tobey's boat, a little man named Mauger. It was he whom Dan'l ruled by a superior tongue, deriding the man and scorching him with jests that made Mauger crimson with shame for himself. Mauger was a greenie; he was a product of the worst conditions of the city. He was little and shrunken and thin, and his shoulders curled forward as though to hug and shelter his weak chest. Nevertheless, there was a rat-like spirit in the man, and a rat-like gleam in his black little eyes. He was one of those men who inspire dislike, even when they strive to win the liking of their fellows. The very fo'c's'le baited him.

It was through Mauger that the first open clash between Cap'n Wing and Faith, his wife, was brought to pass; and the thing happened in this wise.

Dan'l Tobey knew how to handle Mauger; and he kept the little man in a continual ferment of helpless anger. When they were off in the boats after a whale, or merely for the sake of boat drill, Dan'l gave all his attention to Mauger, who rowed tub oar in Dan'l's boat.

"Now if you'll not mind, Mauger," he would say, "just put your strength into the stroke there. Just a trifle of it. Gently, you understand, for we must not break the oars. But lean to it, Mauger. Lean to it, little man."

And Mauger strove till the veins stood out upon his narrow forehead, and his black little eyes gleamed.... And within him boiled and boiled a vast revolt, a hatred of Dan'l. Again and again, he was on the point of an open outbreak; he cursed between his teeth, and slavered, and thought of the bliss of sinking his nails in Dan'l's smooth throat.... The wrath in the man gathered like a tempest....

But always Dan'l pricked the bubble of this wrath with some sly word that left Mauger helpless and bewildered....

He set the man to scrub the decks, amidships, one day after an eighty barrel bull whale had been tried out. There were other men at work, scrubbing; but Dan'l gave all his attention to Mauger. He leaned against the rail, and smiled cheerfully at the little man, and spoke caustically....

"—not used to the scrub brush, Mauger. That's plain to see. But you'll learn its little ways.... Give you time...."

And.... "Lend a little weight to it on the thrust, little man. Put your pith into it...."

And.... "Here's a spot, here by my foot, that needs attention.... Come.... No, yonder.... No, beyond that again.... So...."

Or.... "See, now, how the Portugee there scrubs...." And when Mauger looked toward the Portugee, Dan'l rasped: "Come.... Don't be looking up from your tasks, little man. Attention, there...."

This continued until Mauger, fretted and tormented and wild with the fury of a helpless thing, was minded to rise and fling himself at Dan'l's round, freckled face.... And in that final moment before the outbreak must surely have come, Dan'l said pleasantly:

"So.... That is nicely. Go below now, Mauger, and rest. Ye've worked well...."

And the kindliness of his tone robbed Mauger of all wrath, so that the little man crept forward, and down to his bunk, and fairly sobbed there with rage, and nerves, and general bewilderment.

Dan'l was the man's master, fair....

This was one side of the matter; Cap'n Noll Wing was on the other side.

Noll Wing had been harassed by the difficulties of the early weeks of the cruise. It seemed to the man that the whole world combined to torment him. He was, for one thing, a compound of rasping nerves; the slightest mishap on the Sally Sims preyed on his mind; the least slackness on the part of the mates, the least error by the men sent him into a futile storm of anger....

Even toward Faith, he blew hot, blew cold.... There were times when he felt the steadfast love she gave him was like a burden hung about his neck; and he wished he might cast it off, and wished he had never married her, and wished ... a thousand things. These were the days when the old strength of the man reasserted itself, when he held his head high, and would have defied the world.... But there were other hours, when he was spiritually bowed by the burdens of his task; and in these hours it seemed to him Faith was his only reliance, his only support. He leaned upon her as a man leans upon a staff. She was now a nagging burden, now a peaceful haven of rest to which he could retreat from all the world....

If he felt thus toward Faith, whom, in his way, the man did love, how much more unstable was his attitude toward the men about him. In his relations with them, he alternated between storming anger and querulous complaint. Once, when they were hauling up to the mainhead a blanket strip of blubber from a small cow whale, the tackle gave and let the whole strip snap down like a smothering blanket of rubber.... The old Noll Wing would have leaped into the resulting tangle and brought order out of it with half a dozen sharp commands, with a curt blow.... This time, he stood aft by the boat house and nagged at the mate, and cried:

"Mr. Ham, will you please get that mess straightened out? In God's name, why can't you men do things the right way? You...." He flung up his hands like a hysterical woman. "By God, I wish I'd stayed ashore...."

And he turned and went aft and sulkily down into the cabin, to fret at Faith, while Mr. Ham and Dan'l Tobey brought order out of chaos, and Dan'l smiled faintly at his own thoughts.

Now it is a truth which every soldier knows, that a commanding officer must command. When he begins to entreat, or to scold like a woman, or to give any other indication of cracking nerves, the men under him conspire maliciously to torment him, in the hope of provoking new outbreaks. It is instinctive with them; they do it as naturally as small boys torment a helpless dog. And it was so on the Sally Sims. The more frequently Noll Wing forgot that he was master, the more persistently the men harassed him.

His officers saw the change in Noll, and tried to hide it or deny it as their natures prompted. The mate, Mr. Ham, developed an unsuspected loyalty, covering his chief's errors by his own strength; and young Willis Cox backed him nobly. Dan'l Tobey, likewise, was always quick to take hold of matters when they slipped from the captain's fingers; but he did it a little ostentatiously.... Noll himself did not perceive this ostentation; but the men saw, and understood. It was as though Dan'l whispered over his shoulder to them:

"See! The old man's failing. I have to handle you for him...."

Once or twice Dan'l bungled some task in a fashion that provoked these outbreaks; and whether or not this was mere chance, Faith was always about on these occasions. For example, at dinner one day in the cabin, Dan'l looked mournfully at the salt beef that was set before him, and then began to eat it with such a look of resignation on his countenance that Noll demanded: "What's wrong with the beef, Mr. Tobey?"

Dan'l said pleasantly: "Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. It's very good fare, and almighty well cooked, I'd say."

Now it was not well cooked. Tinch, the cook, had been hurried, or careless.... The junk he had brought down to the cabin was half raw, a nauseous mass.... And Dan'l knew it, and so did Noll Wing. But Noll might have taken no notice but for Dan'l, and Dan'l's tone....

As it was, he was forced to take notice. And so he bellowed for Tinch, and when the cook came running, Noll lifted the platter and flung it, with its greasy contents, at the man's head, roaring profanely....

Faith was at the table; she said nothing. But when Noll looked at her, and saw the disappointment in her eyes—disappointment in him—he wished to justify himself; and so complained: "Damned shame.... A man can't get decent food out of that rascal.... If I wasn't a fool, Faith, I'd have stayed ashore...."

Faith thought she would have respected him more if, having given way to his anger, he had stuck to his guns, instead of seeking thus weakly to placate her. And Dan'l Tobey watched Faith, and was well content with himself.

It was Dan'l, in the end, who brought Mauger and Cap'n Wing together; and if matters went beyond what he had intended, that was because chance favored him.

It was a day when Mauger took a turn at the awkward steering apparatus of the Sally Sims. The Sally's wheel was so arranged that when it was twirled, it moved to and fro across the deck, dragging the tiller with it. To steer was a trick that required learning; and in any sea, the tiller bucked, and the wheel fought the steersman in eccentric and amazing fashion. This antiquated arrangement was one of the curses of many ships of the whaling fleet.... Mauger had never been able to get the trick of it....

Dan'l's watch came on deck and Mauger took the wheel at a moment when Cap'n Wing was below. Faith was with him. Dan'l knew the captain would be entering the log, writing up his records of the cruise, reading.... He also knew that if Noll Wing followed his custom, he would presently come on deck. And he knew—he himself had had a hand in this—that Noll had been drinking, that day, more than usual.

That Faith came up with Noll, a little later, was chance; no more. Dan'l had not counted on it.

Mauger, then, was at the wheel. Dan'l leaned against the deckhouse behind Mauger, and devoted himself amicably to the task of instructing the man. His tone remained, throughout, even and calm; but there was a bite in it which seared the very skin of Mauger's back.

"You'll understand," said Dan'l cheerfully, "you are not rolling a hoop in your home gutter, Mauger. You're too impetuous in your ways.... Be gentle with her...."

This when, the Sally Sims having fallen off her set course, Mauger brought her so far up into the wind that her sails flapped on the yards. Dan'l chided him.

"Not so strenuous, Mauger. A little turn, a spoke or two.... You overswing your mark, little man. Stick her nose into it, and keep it there...."

The worst of it was, from Mauger's point of view, that he was trying quite desperately to hold the Sally's blunt bows where they belonged. But there was a sea; the rollers pounded her high sides with an overwhelming impact, and the awkward wheel put a constant strain on his none-too-adequate arms and shoulders. When the Sally swung off, and he fought her back to her course, she was sure to swing too far the other way; when he tried to ease her up to it, a following sea was sure to catch him and thrust him still farther off the way he should go....

He fought the wheel as though it were a live thing, and the sweat burst out on him, and his arms and shoulders ached; and all the time, Dan'l at his back flogged him with gentle jeers, and seared him with caustic words....

The rat-like little man had the temper of a rat. Dan'l knew this; he was careful never to push Mauger too far. So, this afternoon, he brought the man, little by little, to the boiling point, and held him there as delicately in the balance as a chemist's scales.... With a word, he might at any time have driven Mauger mad with fury; with a word he could have reduced the helpless little man to smothering sobs.

He had Mauger thus trembling and wild when Noll Wing came on deck, Faith at his side. Dan'l looked at them shrewdly; he saw that Noll's face was flushed, and that Noll's eyes were hot and angry. And—behind the back of Mauger at the wheel—he nodded toward the little man, and caught Noll's eyes, and raised his shoulders hopelessly, smiling.... It was as if he said:

"See what a hash the little man is making of his simple job. Is he not a hopeless thing?"

Noll caught Dan'l's glance; and while Mauger still quivered with the memory of Dan'l's last word, Noll looked at the compass, and cuffed Mauger on the ear and growled at him:

"Get her on her course, you gutter dog...."

Which was just enough to fill to overflowing Mauger's cup of wrath. The little man abandoned the wheel.... Dan'l caught it before the Sally could fall away ... and Mauger sprang headlong, face black with wrath, at Cap'n Wing.

He was scarce a third Noll's size; but the fury of his attack was such that for a moment Noll was staggered. Then the captain's fist swung home, and the little man whirled in the air, and fell crushingly on head and right shoulder, and rolled on the slanting deck like a bundle of soiled old clothes.... Rolled and lay still....

Cap'n Noll Wing, big Noll, whom Faith loved, bellowed and leaped after the little man. He was red with fury that Mauger had attacked him, red with rage that Mauger had, for an instant, thrust him back. He swung his heavy boot and drove it square into the face of the unconscious man. Faith saw....

The toe of the captain's boot struck Mauger in the right eye-socket, as he lay on his side. At the blow, for an instant, the man's eye literally splashed out, bulging, on his temple....

Some women would have screamed; some would have flung themselves upon Noll to drag him back. Faith did neither of these things. She stood for an instant, her lips white.... Her sorrow and pity were not for Mauger, who had suffered the blow.... They were for Noll, her Noll, her husband whom she loved and wished to respect.... Sorrow and pity for Noll, who had done this thing....

She turned quickly and went down into her cabin....

Noll came down, minutes later, after she had heard the feet of running men, the voices of men upon the deck. He came down, found her in the cabin which served as his office. She was standing, looking out one of the windows in the stern....

He said thickly: "That damned rat won't try that on me again...."

She turned, and her eyes held his. "That was a cowardly thing to do, Noll, my husband," she said.

V

When Noll Wing kicked the unconscious man, and Faith slipped quietly away and went below, the life of the Sally Sims for an instant stood still. Yella' Boy and Loum, two of the boat-steerers, were lounging at the forward end of the boathouse, and saw. Dan'l Tobey, who had gripped the wheel, saw. And three or four of the men, amidships, saw. For a space they all stood still, watching, while Noll growled above his victim, and Mauger, limp and senseless, rolled slackly back and forth upon the deck with the motion of the vessel.

Then Noll looked around, and saw them all watching him with steady, hard, frightened eyes; and their silence irked him, so that he broke it with a cry of his own.

"You, Yella' Boy, sluice him off," he shouted.

Yella' Boy grinned, showed his teeth with the amiability of his dark race; and he took a canvas bucket and dropped it over the rail, and drew it up filled with brine, and flung this callously in Mauger's horribly crushed face. The water loosed the blood, washed it away in flecks and gouts.... It bared the skin, and through this skin, from many little slits and scratches like the cracks in a half-broken egg, more blood trickled, spreading moistly. The salt burned.... Mauger groaned hoarsely, slumped into unconsciousness again.

"Douse him again," Noll Wing commanded. "The dog's shamming." He looked around, saw Dan'l at the wheel. "You, Mr. Tobey, look to him," he commanded.

Dan'l was one of those men whose hands have a knack for healing. He knew something of medicine; he had gone so far, upon a former cruise, as to trim away a man's crushed fingers after an accident of the whale fisheries had nipped them.... He hailed one of the men in the waist, now, and gave the wheel to this man, and then crossed to where Mauger lay and knelt beside him, and dabbed away the blood upon his face....

Cap'n Wing, leaning against the rail, his knuckles white with the grip he had upon it, watched Dan'l, and swayed upon his feet.... And Yella' Boy, with his bucket still half full of brine, stood by, and grinned, and waited.

Mauger came slowly back to life under Dan'l's ministrations; he groaned, and he began to twitch, and kick.... And of a sudden he cried out, like one suddenly waking from sleep. Then consciousness flooded him, and with it came the agony he was enduring, and he howled.... And then his howls grew weak and weaker till he was sobbing.... And Dan'l helped him to his feet.... He had put a rough bandage about the man's head, and from beneath this bandage, one of Mauger's eyes looked forth, blackly gleaming, wild with the torment he endured. This eye fixed its gaze upon Noll Wing....

Dan'l stepped a little nearer Noll, and said in a low voice: "His eye is gone, sir. No good. It ought to be dimmed out.... Cleared away...."

That shocked the liquor out of Noll; his face went white beneath the brown; and Mauger heard, and suddenly he screamed again, and leveled a shaking finger at Noll Wing, and cursed him shrilly.... Dan'l whirled and bade him be silent; he signed to Yella' Boy, and the harpooner half dragged, half carried Mauger forward. But as they went, Mauger, twisting in the other's arms, shook his thin fist at Noll Wing and swore terribly.... Cursed Noll, called death down upon him, vowed that he would some day even the score....

Yella' Boy cuffed him and dragged him away.... And Dan'l watched Noll to see what the captain would say. Noll said nothing. He took off his cap and rubbed his bald head and looked for an instant like an old man; his eyes shifted furtively from Dan'l to the cursing man....

Abruptly, he turned and went aft to the stern of the ship and stood there by himself, thinking. He sought reassurance; he abused Mauger under his breath, and told himself the little man had been well served.... The Sally fell away; he turned and cursed the new man at the wheel, and got relief from the oath he spoke. It gave him a blustering sort of courage.... He wished Dan'l Tobey would tell him he had done right.... But Dan'l had gone forward to the fo'c's'le.... Mauger was howling.... Noll thought Dan'l might be trimming away that crushed eye.... And he shuddered. He was, suddenly, immensely lonely. He wished with all his soul for support, for a word of comfort, a word of reassurance....

He went down into the cabin, thinking to speak with Henry Ham. Mr. Ham was always an apostle of violence.... But the mate was sleeping; Noll could hear him snore. So was tigerish little James Tichel....

Noll went into the after cabin, and found Faith there. Her back was turned, she was looking out of the stern windows. He wished she would look at him, but she did not. So he said, his voice thick with anger, and at the same time plaintive with hunger for a reassuring word....

"That damned rat won't try that again...."

Then Faith turned and told him: "That was a cowardly thing to do, Noll, my husband."

He had come for comfort; he was ready to humble himself; he was a prey to the instinct of wrong-doing man which bids him confess and be forgiven.... But Faith's eyes accused him.... When a man's wife turns against him.... He said, bitter with rage:

"Keep your mouth shut, child. This is not a pink tea, aboard the Sally Sims. You know nothing of what's necessary to handle rough men."

Faith smiled a little wistfully. "I know it is never necessary to kick a helpless man in the face," she said.

He was so nearly mad with fury and shame and misery that he raised his great fist as though he would have struck even Faith. "Mind your own matters," he bade her harshly. "The dog struck me.... Where would the ship be if I let that go? I should have killed him...."

"Did you not?" Faith asked gently. "I thought he would be dead...."

"No; hell, no!" Noll blustered. "You can't kill a snake. He'll be poisonous as ever in a day...."

"I saw ..." said Faith; she shuddered faintly. "I—think his eye is gone."

"Eye?" Noll echoed. "What's an eye? He's lucky to live. There's skippers that would have killed him where he stood.... For what he did...."

Faith shook her head. "He's only a little man, weak, not used to sea life. You are big, and strong, Noll.... My Noll.... There was no need of kicking him."

The man flung himself, then, into an insane burst of anger at her. He hated the whole world, hated Faith most of all because she would not soothe him and tell him never to mind.... He raved at her, gripped her round shoulders and shook her, flung her away from him.... He was mad....

And Faith, steadfastly watching him, though her soul trembled, prayed in her heart that she might find the way to bring Noll back to manhood again; she endured his curses; she endured his harsh grip upon her shoulders.... She waited while he flooded her with abuse.... And at the end, when he was quiet for lack of words to say, she went to him and touched his arm.

"Noll ..." she said.

He jerked away from her. "What?"

"Noll.... Look at me...."

He obeyed, in spite of himself; and there was such depths of tenderness and sorrow in her eyes that the man's heart melted in him. "It's not Mauger I'm sorry for," she told him. "It's you, Noll.... That you should be so cowardly, Noll...."

His rage broke, then; he fell to fretting, whining.... She sat down; he slumped like a child beside her. He told her he was tired, weary.... That he was worried.... That his nerves had betrayed him.... That the drink was in him.... "They're all trying to stir me," he complained. "They take a joy in doing the thing wrong.... They're helpless, slithering fools.... I lost myself, Faith...."

He pleaded with her, desperately anxious to make her understand; and Faith understood from the beginning, with the full wisdom of woman, yet let him talk out all his unhappiness and remorse.... And because she loved him, her arm was about him and his great head was drawn against her breast long before he was done. She comforted him with touches of her light hands upon his head; she soothed him with murmurs that were no words at all....

The man reveled in this orgy of self-abasement. He groveled before her, until she began to be faintly contemptuous, in her heart, at his groveling. She bade him make an end of it....

"I was a coward, Faith," he cried. "You're right. I was a coward...."

"You are a man, Noll," she told him. "Stronger than other men, and not in your fists alone. That is why I love you so...."

"I know, I know," he told her. "Oh, you're a wonder, Faith...."

"You're a man. Always remember that," she said.

He got up abruptly. He started toward the main cabin; and she asked: "Where are you going, Noll?"

"Forward," he said. "I've wronged Mauger...." He was drunk with this new-found joy of abasing himself. "I'll tell the man so. I'll right things with him...."

And he added thoughtfully: "He cursed me. I don't want the man's hate. I'll right things with him...."

She smiled faintly, shook her head. "No, Noll...."

He was stubborn. "Yes. Why not? I've...."

She said thoughtfully: "Noll, you're the master of this ship. Old Jonathan Felt put her in your charge. You are responsible for her.... And that puts certain obligations on you, Noll. An obligation to be wise, and to be prudent, and to be brave...."

He came back and sat down beside her. She touched his knee. "You are like a king, aboard here, Noll. And—the king can do no wrong. I would not go to Mauger, if I were you. You made a mistake; but there is no need you should humble yourself before the men. They would not understand; they would only despise you, Noll."

He said hotly: "Let them. They're sneaking, spineless things...."

"Let them fear you; let them hate you," she told him. "But—never let them forget you are master, Noll. Don't go to Mauger...."

He had no real desire to go; he wished only to bask in her new-found sympathy. And he yielded readily enough, at last....

The matter passed abruptly. She rose; he went up on deck; the Sally Sims went on her way. And for a day or two, Noll Wing, an old man, was like a boy who has repented and been forgiven; he was offensively virtuous, offensively good-natured.

Mauger returned to his duties the second day. He wore a bandage across his face; and when it was discarded a week later, the hollow socket where his eye had been was revealed. His suffering had worked a terrible change in the man; he had been morose and desperate, he was now too much given to chuckling, as though at some secret jest of his own. He went slyly about his tasks; he seemed to have a pride in his misfortune; when he saw men shrink with distaste at sight of his scarred countenance, he chuckled under his breath....

Dan'l Tobey had cut away the crushed eye-ball; the lids covered the empty socket. In the upper lid, some maimed nerve persisted in living. It twitched, now and then, in such a fashion that Mauger seemed to be winking with that deep hollow in his face....

The man had a fascination, from the beginning, for Noll Wing. The captain took an unholy joy in looking upon his handiwork; he shivered at it, as a boy shivers at a tale of ghosts.... And he felt the gleaming glance of Mauger's remaining eye like a threat. It followed him whenever they were both on deck together; if he looked toward Mauger, he was sure to catch the other watching him.

Dan'l Tobey was cheerfully philosophical about the matter. "He can see as well as ever, with what he has left," he told Noll one day. "And he ought to count himself lucky. Your boot might have mashed his head in.... And serve him right...."

"Aye," said Noll, willing to be reassured. "He's lucky to live. The dog must know that...."

And he looked forward to where Mauger lounged amidships, beside the try works, and saw the man's black eye watching him; and Mauger caught the captain's glance, and chuckled unpleasantly, his face twisting. Noll felt a quiver of horror, far within himself....

He began, even in the fortnight after the affair, to remember Mauger's curses and threats as the man was borne away by Yella' Boy, that day. Mauger had threatened to kill him, to cut his heart away.... The meaningless cries of a delirious man, he told himself.... No doubt Mauger had forgotten them before this.

He tried, one day, the experiment of giving the one-eyed man an order. Smoking his pipe, he spilled ashes on the spotless deck; and he bellowed forward to Mauger to come aft, and when the man came, he pointed to the smudge of ashes, and:

"Clean that up," he said harshly. "Look sharp, now."

Mauger chuckled. "Aye, sir," he said respectfully, and on hands and knees at the captain's feet performed his task, looking up slyly into Noll Wing's face as he did so. The lid that closed the empty eye-socket twitched and seemed to wink....

That night, as they were preparing to sleep, Noll spoke of Mauger to Faith. "He does his work better than ever," he said.

She nodded. "Yes." And something in Noll's tone made her attentive.

"Seems cheerful, too," said Noll. He hesitated. "I reckon he's forgot his threat to stick a knife in me.... Don't you think he has?"

Faith's eyes, watching her husband, clouded; for she read his tone. Noll Wing, strong man and brave, could not hide his secret from her....

She understood that he was deathly afraid of the one-eyed man.

VI

The Sally Sims was in the South Atlantic on the day when Noll Wing kicked out Mauger's eye. The life of the whaler went on, day by day, as a background for the drama that was brewing. The men stood watch at the mastheads, the Sally plunged and waddled awkwardly southward; and now and then a misty spout against the wide blue of the sea halted them, and boats were lowered, and the whales were struck, and killed, and towed alongside. Held fast there by the chain that was snubbed around the fluke-chain bitt, they were hacked by the keen spades and cutting knives, the great heads were cut off, and dragged aboard, and stripped of every fleck of oily blubber; and the great bodies, while the spiral blanket strips were torn away, rolled lumberingly over and over against the bark's stout planks. Thereafter the tryworks roared, and the blubber boiled, and the black and stinking smoke of burning oil hung over the seas like a pall....

This smell of burning oil, the mark of the whaler, distressed Faith at first. It sickened her; and the soot from the fires where the scrapple of boiled blubber fed the flames settled over the ship, and penetrated even to her own immaculate cabin. She disliked the smell; but the gigantic toil of the cutting in and the roar of the tryworks had always a fascination for her that compensated for the smell and the soot. She rejoiced in strength, in the strong work of lusty men. To see a great carcass almost as long as the Sally lying helplessly against the rail never failed to thrill her. For the men of the crew, it was all in the day's work; stinking, sweating, perilous toil. For Faith it was a tremendous spectacle. It intoxicated her; and in the same fashion it affected Noll Wing, and Dan'l Tobey, and tigerish old Tichel. When there were fish about, these men were subtly changed; their eyes shone, their chests swelled, their muscles hardened; they stamped upon the deck with stout legs, like a cavalry horse that scents the battle. They gave themselves to the toil of killing whales and harvesting the blubber as men give themselves to a debauch; and afterward, when the work was done, they were apt to surrender to a lassitude such as follows a debauch. There was keen, sensual joy in the running oil, the unctuous oil that flowed everywhere upon the decks; they dabbed their hands in it; it soaked their garments and their very skins drank it in.

Young Roy Kilcup took fire, from the beginning, at these gigantic spectacles. He wished to go out in the boats that struck the whales; but he lacked the sinews of a man, he lacked the perfect muscular control of manhood. He was still a boy, nimble as a monkey, but given to awkward gestures and leaps and motions. He could not be trusted to sit tight in a boat and handle his oar when a whale was leaping under the iron; and so he was condemned to stay on the ship.

But they could not deny him a part in the cutting in; and when that work was afoot, he was everywhere, his eyes gleaming.... He slashed at the blubber with a boarding knife; he minced it for the boiling; he descended into the blubber room and helped stow the stuff there. Faith, watching, loved his enthusiasm and his zeal....

After the matter of Mauger, things went smoothly for a space. The whales came neither too fast nor too slow; they killed one or two, at intervals of days; they cut them in; they tried them out, while the fires flared through night and day and cast red shadows on the dark faces of the men, and turned their broad, bared chests to gold. And when the blubber was boiled, they cleaned ship, and idled on their way, and raised, in due time, other whales....

Cap'n Wing chose to go west, instead of eastward past the tip of Africa and up into the Indian Ocean. So they worked their painful way around the Horn, fighting for inches day by day; and when the bleak fog did not blanket them, Faith could see gaunt mountains of rock above the northern rim of the sea. And once they passed a clipper, eastward bound. It swept up on them, a tower of tugging canvas; it came abreast, slipped past, and dwindled into a white dot upon the sea behind before night came down and hid it from their eyes. In the morning, though they had idled with no canvas pulling, through the night, the clipper was gone, and they were alone again among the mountains that came down to the sea....

So they slid out at last into the South Pacific, and struck a little north of west for the wide whaling grounds of the island-dotted South Seas. And struck their whales....

The routine of their tasks.... But during this time, a change was working in Noll Wing, which Faith, and Dan'l Tobey, and all who looked might see.

The matter of Mauger had been, in some measure, a milestone in Noll Wing's life. He had struck men before; he had maimed them. He had killed at least one man, in fair fight, when it was his life or the other's. But because in those days his pulse was strong and his heart was young, the matter had never preyed upon him. He had been able to go proudly on his way, strong in his strength, sure of himself, serene and unafraid. He was, in those days, a man.

But this was different; this was the parting of the ways. Noll had spent his great strength too swiftly. His muscles were as stout as ever; but his heart was not. Drink was gnawing at him; old age was gnawing at him; he was like an old wolf that by the might of tooth and fang has led the pack for long.... He had seen strong men fail; he knew what failure meant; and he could guess the slackening of his own great powers and prevision the end of this slackening. The wolf dreads the day when a young, strong wolf will drag him down; Noll dreaded the day when his voice and his eye and his fist should fail to master the men. He had been absolute so long, he could endure no less. He must rule, or he was done....

At times, when he felt this failing of his own strong heart, he blamed Faith for it, and fretted at her because she dragged him down. At other times, he was ashamed, he was afraid of the eyes of the men; he fled to her for comfort and for strength. He was a prey, too, to regretful memories. The matter of Mauger, for instance.... He was, for all he fought the feeling, tortured by remorse for what he had done to Mauger.

And he was dreadfully afraid of the one-eyed man.

At first, he half enjoyed this fear; it was a new sensation, and he rolled in it like a horse in clover. But as the weeks passed, it nagged at him so constantly that he became obsessed with it. Wherever he turned, he saw the one-eyed man regarding him; and this steady scrutiny of Mauger's one black eye was like a continual pin-prick. It twanged his nerves.... He tried, for a time, to find relief in blustering; he roared about the ship, bellowing his commands.... It comforted him to see men jump to obey. But from the beginning, this was not utter comfort. He was pursued by the chuckling, mirthless mirth of the one-eyed man. He thought Mauger was like a scavenger bird that waits for a sick beast to die. Mauger harassed him....

This change in Noll Wing reacted upon Faith. Because her life was so close to his, she was forced to witness the manifestations which he hid from the men; because her eyes were the eyes of a woman who loves, she saw things which the men did not see. She saw the slow loosening of the muscles of Noll's jaw; saw how his cheeks came to sag like jowls. She saw the old, proud strength in his eyes weaken and fail; she saw his eyes grow red and furtive.... Saw, too, how his whole body became overcast with a thickening, flabby garment of fat, like a net that bound his slothful limbs....

Noll's slow disintegration of soul had its effect upon Faith. She had been, when she came to the Sally Sims with him, little more than a girl; she had been gay and laughing, but she had also been calm and strong. As the weeks passed, Faith was less gay; her laugh rang more seldom. But by the same token, the strength that dwelt in her seemed to increase. While Noll weakened, she grew strong....

There were days when she was very lonely; she felt that the Noll she had married was gone from her.... She was, for all her strength, a woman; and a woman is always happiest when she can lean on other strength and find comfort there.... But Noll.... Noll, by this, was not so strong of soul as she....

She was lonely with another loneliness; with the loneliness of a mother.... But Noll had told her, brutally, in the beginning, that there was no place for a babe upon the Sally Sims. He overbore her, because in such a matter she could not command him. The longing was too deep in her for words. She could not lay it bare for even Noll to see....

Thus, in short, Faith was unhappy. Unhappy; yet she loved Noll, and her heart clung to him, and yearned to strengthen and support the man, yearned to bring back the valor she had loved in him.... There could never be, so long as he should live, any man but Noll for her.

Dan'l Tobey—poor Dan'l, if you will—could not understand this. Dan'l, for all his round and simple countenance, and the engaging frankness of his freckles and his hair, had an eye that could see into the heart of a man. He had understanding; he could read men's moods; he could play upon them, guide them without their guessing at his guidance. He managed skillfully. He held the respect, even the affection of the bulk of the crew; he had the liking of all the officers save Willis Cox, who disliked him for a reason he could not put in words. He bent his efforts to hold Roy Kilcup; and Roy worshiped him. He took care to please Noll Wing, and Noll leaned upon Dan'l, and trusted him. Dan'l was the only man on the ship who always applauded whatever Noll might do; and Noll, hungry as an old man for praise, fed fat on Dan'l's applause....

Dan'l was wise; he was also crafty. He contrived, again and again, that Noll should act unworthily in Faith's eyes. To this extent he understood Faith; he understood her ideals, knew that she judged men by them, knew that when Noll fell short of these ideals, Faith must in her heart condemn him.... And he took care that Noll should fall short....

For one thing—a little matter, but at the same time a matter of vast importance—he used the fact that big Noll did not eat prettily. Noll, accustomed to the sea, having all his life been a hungry man among men, was not careful of the niceties of the table. He ate quickly; he ate loudly; he ate clumsily. Dan'l, somewhat gentler bred, understood this; and at the meals in the cabin when Noll was particularly offensive, Dan'l used to catch Faith into spirited conversation, as though to distract her attention.... He did this in such a way that it seemed to be mere loyalty to Noll; yet it served to create an atmosphere of understanding between Dan'l and Faith, and it showed him in her eyes as a loyal servant, without hiding the fact that big Noll was a gross man.

When they were all on deck together, and Dan'l saw that burning sun or splattering rain was unpleasant to Faith, he used to remedy the matter by finding shelter for her; and in doing this he emphasized—by the doing itself—the fact that Noll had failed to think of her. How much of these things was, in the beginning, designed to win Faith from Noll it is impossible to say. Dan'l delighted in the very doing; for he loved Faith, had loved her for years, still loved her so intensely that there were hours when he could have strangled Noll with his bare hands because Noll possessed her.

Dan'l loved Faith with a passion that gripped him, soul and body; yet it was not an unholy thing. When he saw her unhappy, he wished to guard her; when he saw that she was lonely, he wished to comfort her; when he came upon her, once, at the stern, and saw that she had tears in her eyes, it called for all his strength to refrain from taking her in his arms and soothing her. He loved her, but there was nothing in his love that could have soiled her. Dan'l was, in some fashion, a figure of tragedy....

His heart burst from him, one day when they were two weeks in the South Pacific. It was a hard, bitter day; one of those days when the sea is unfriendly, when she torments a ship with thrusting billows, when she racks planks and strains rigging, when she is perverse without being dangerous. There was none of the joy of battle in enduring such a sea; there was only irksome toil. It told on Noll Wing. His temper worked under the strain. He was on deck through the afternoon; and the climax came when Willis Cox's boat parted the lines that held its bow and fell and dangled by the stern lines, slatting against the rail of the Sally, and spilling the gear into the sea. With every lurch of the sea, the boat was splintering; and before the men, driven by Dan'l and Willis, could get the boat inboard again, it was as badly smashed as if a whale's flukes had caught it square. Noll had raged while the men toiled; when the boat was stowed, he strode toward Willis Cox and spun the man around by a shoulder grip.

"Your fault, you damned, careless skunk," he accused. "You're no more fit for your job.... You're a...."

Willis Cox was little more than a boy; he had a boy's sense of justice. He was heart-broken by the accident, and he said soberly: "I'm sorry, sir. It was my fault. You're right, sir."

"Right?" Noll roared. "Of course I'm right. Do I need a shirking fourth mate to tell me when I'm right or wrong? By...." His wrath overflowed in a blow; and for all the fact that Noll was aging, his fist was stout. The blow dropped Willis like the stroke of an ax. Noll himself filled a bucket and sluiced the man, and drove him below with curses.

Afterward, the reaction sent Noll to Faith in a rage at himself, at the men, at the world, at her. Dan'l, in the main cabin, heard Noll swearing at her.... And he set his teeth and went on deck because of the thing he might do. He was still there, half an hour later, when Faith came quietly up the companion. Night had fallen by then, the sea was moderating. Faith passed him, where he stood by the galley; and he saw her figure silhouetted against the gray gloom of the after rail. For a moment he watched her, gripping himself.... He saw her shoulders stir, as though she wept....

The man could not endure it. He was at her side in three strides.... She faced him; and he could see her eyes dark in the night as she looked at him. He stammered:

"Faith! Faith! I'm so sorry...."

She did not speak, because she could not trust her voice. She was furiously ashamed of her own weakness, of the disloyalty of her thoughts of Noll. She swallowed hard....

"He's a dog, Faith," Dan'l whispered. "Ah, Faith.... I love you. I love you. I could kill him, I love you so...."

Faith knew she must speak. She said quietly: "Dan'l.... That is not...."

He caught her hand, with an eloquent grace that was strange to see in the awkward, freckled man. He caught her hand to his lips and kissed it. "I love you, Faith," he cried....

She freed her hand, rubbed at it where his lips had pressed it. Dan'l was scarce breathing at all.... Fearful of what he had done, fearful of what she might do or say....

She said simply: "Dan'l, my friend, I love Noll Wing with all my heart."

And poor Dan'l knew, for all she spoke so simply, that there was no part of her which was his. And he backed away from her a little, humbly, until his figure was shadowed by the deckhouse. And then he turned and went forward to the waist, and left Faith standing there.

He found Mauger in the waist, and jeered at him good-naturedly until he was himself again. Faith, after a little, went below.

Noll was asleep in his bunk above hers. He lay on his back, one bare and hairy arm hanging over the side of the bunk. He was snoring, and there was the pungent smell of rum about him.

Faith undressed and went quietly to bed.

VII

"There is a tide in the affairs of men...." Their lives ebb and flow like the tides; there are days, or months, or years when matters move slackly, seem scarce to move at all. But always, in the end, the pulses of the days beat up and up.... A moment comes when all life is compressed in a single act, a single incident.... Thereafter the tide falls away again, but the life of man is a different thing thereafter.

Such a tide was beating to the flood aboard the Sally Sims. Faith felt it; Dan'l felt it; even Noll Wing, through the fury of his increasing impotence, felt that matters could not long go on in this wise. Noll felt it less than the others, because the waxing tension of his nerves was relieved by his occasional outbursts of tempestuous rage. But Faith could find no vent for her unhappiness; she loved Noll, and she wept for him.... Wept for the Noll she had married, who now was dying before her eyes.... And Dan'l suffered, perhaps, more than Faith. He suffered because he must not seem to suffer....

The thing could not go on, Dan'l thought; he told himself, in the night watches when he was alone on deck, that he could not long endure the torment of his longing. Thus far he had loved Faith utterly; his half-unconscious efforts to discredit Noll were the result of no malice toward Noll Wing, but only of love for Faith. But the denial of his longing for the right to care for her was poisoning him; the man's soul was brewing venom. The honorable fibers of his being were disintegrating; his heart was rotting in the man.

He was at the point where a little thing might have saved him; he was, by the same token, at the point where a little thing could set him forever upon the shameful paths of wrong.

Noll passed, at this time, into a period of sloth. He gave up, bit by bit, the vigorous habits of his life. He had been accustomed of old to take the deck at morning, and keep it till dusk; and when need arose in the night, he had always been quick to leap from his bunk and spring to the spot where his strength was demanded. He had, in the past, loved to take his own boat after the whales that were sighted; he had continued to do this in the early stages of this cruise, leaving Eph Hitch, the cooper; and Tinch, the cook; and Kellick, and a spare hand or so to keep ship with Faith and Roy Kilcup. But when they came into the South Seas, he gave this up; and for a month on end, he did not leave the ship. The mates struck the whales, and killed them, and cut them in, while Noll slept heavily in his cabin.

He gave up, also, the practice of spending most of the day on deck. He stayed below, reading a little, writing up the log, or sitting with glazed eyes by the cabin table, a bottle in reach of his hand. He slept much, heavily; and even when he was awake, he seemed sodden with the sleep in which he soaked himself.

He passed, during this time, through varying moods. There were days when he sulked and spoke little; there were days when he swore and raged; and there were other days when he followed at Faith's heels with a pathetic cheerfulness, like an old dog that tries to drive its stiff legs to the bounding leaps of puppy play. He was alternately dependent upon her and fretful at her presence....

And always, day by day, he was haunted by the sight of the one-eyed man. He burst out, to Faith, one night; he cried:

"The man plans to knife me. I can see murder in his eye."

Faith, who pitied Mauger and had tried to comfort him, shook her head. "He's broken," she said. "He's but the shell of a man."

"He follows me," Noll insisted. "I turned, on deck, an hour ago; and he was just behind me, in the shadow...."

Faith, seeking to rouse the old spirit in Noll, said gently: "There was a man who tried to stab you once. And you killed him with your hands. Surely you need not be fearful of Mauger."

Noll brooded for a moment. "Eh, Faith," he said dolefully. "I was a hard man, then. I've always been a hard man.... Wrong, Faith. I was always wrong...."

"You were a master," she told him.

"By the fist. A master by the fist.... A hard man...."

He fell to mourning over his own harsh life; he gave himself to futile, ineffectual regrets.... He told over to Faith the tale of the blows he had struck, the oaths, the kicks.... This habit of confession was becoming a mania with him. And when Faith tried smilingly to woo him from this mood, he called her hard.... He told her, one day, she was un-Christian; and he got out a Bible, and began to read.... Thereafter the mates found him in the cabin, day by day, with the Bible spread upon his knees, and the whiskey within reach of his hand....

The disintegration of the master had its inevitable effect upon the crew; they saw, they grinned with their tongues in their cheeks; they winked slyly behind Noll's back. One day Noll called a man and bade him scrub away a stain of oil upon the deck. The man went slackly at the task. The captain said: "Come, sharp there...." And the man grinned and spat over the side and asked impudently:

"What's hurry?"

Noll started to explain; but Henry Ham had heard, and the mate's fist caught the man in the deep ribs, and the man made haste, thereafter. Ham explained respectfully to the captain:

"You can't talk to 'em, sir. Fist does it. Fist and boot. You know that, well's me."

Noll shook his head dolefully. "I've been a hard man in the past, Mr. Ham," he admitted. "But I'll not strike a man again...."

And the mate, who could not understand, chuckled uneasily as though it were all a jest. "I will, for you, sir," he said.

If Dan'l Tobey had been mate, and so minded, he could have kept the crew alert and keen; but Dan'l had his own troubles, and he did not greatly care what came to Noll and Noll's ship. So, Noll's hand slackening, the men were left to Mr. Ham; and the mate, while fit for his job, was not fit for Noll's. Matters went from bad to worse....

This growing slackness culminated in tragedy. Where matters of life and death are a part of every day, safety lies in discipline; and discipline was lax on the Sally Sims. On a day when the skies were ugly and the wind was freshening, they sighted a lone bull whale, and the mate and Willis Cox lowered for him while the ship worked upwind toward where the creature lay. The boats, rowing, distanced the bark; the mate struck the whale, and the creature fluked the boat so that its planks opened and it sank till it was barely awash, and dipped the men in water to their necks. Silva, the mate's harpooner, cut the line and let the whale run free; and a moment later, Willis Cox's boat got fast when Loum pitchpoled his great harpoon over thirty feet of water as the whale went down....

The big bull began to run headlong, and the men in Willis's boat balanced on the sides for a "Nantucket Sleigh-ride." The whale ran straightaway, so tirelessly they could not haul up on the line.... The weather thickened behind them and hid the Sally as she stopped to pick up the mate and his wrecked boat. Then a squall struck, and night came swiftly down....

When Willis saw it was hopeless to think of killing the whale, he cut. It was then full dark, and blowing. Some rain fell, but the flying spume that the wind clipped from the wave tops kept the boat a quarter full of sea water, no matter how desperately they bailed. Toward midnight, the thirsty men wished to drink.

A whaleboat is always provisioned against the emergency of being cast adrift. Biscuits and water are stored in the lantern keg, with matches and whatever else may be needful. The water is replenished now and then, that it may be fresh....

When Willis opened the lantern keg, he found the water half gone, and so brackish it was unfit to drink. A condition directly to be attributed to the weakening of discipline aboard the Sally.... A serious matter, as they knew all too well when the next day dawned bright and hot, with the bark nowhere to be seen. Their thirst increased tormentingly; and on the third day, when the searching Sally found them, two men were dead in the boat, and the other four were in little better case....

Willis had worked his boat toward an island northeast of the position where he lost the Sally; Dan'l Tobey had guessed what Willis would do, and had persuaded Noll to cruise that way. When they picked up the half dead men, Noll decided to touch at the island for food and fresh water; and they raised it in mid-morning of the second day.

They had seen other lands since the cruise began. But these other lands had been rocky and inhospitable.... The harsh tops, for the most part, of mountains that rose from the sea's depths to break the surface of the sea. Men dwelt on them, clinging like goats in the crannies of the rocks.... But they were not inviting. This island was different. When Faith, coming on deck at the cry, saw it blue-green against the horizon, she caught her breath at the beauty of it; and while the Sally worked closer, she watched with wide eyes and leaping pulses. She felt, vaguely, that it was the portal of a new world; it was lovely, inviting, pleasant.... She was suddenly sick of the harsh salt of the sea, sick of the stinking ship.... She wanted soft earth beneath her feet, trees above her head, flowers within reach of her hand....

This island was fair and smiling; it seemed to promise her all the things she most desired.... She sought Noll Wing.

"Are you going ashore, Noll?" she asked.

He was in one of his slothful moods, half asleep in the after cabin; and he shook his great head. "No.... Mates will get what we need. We'll be away by night."

She hesitated. "I—want to go ashore," she said. "Won't you go with me?"

"You can go," he agreed, readily enough. "Nobody there but some niggers—and maybe a few whites, on the beach. Nothing to see...."

"There's land," she told him, smiling. "And trees, and flowers.... Do come."

"You go along. I'm—tired, to-day."

"I'd like it so much more if you came with me."

He frowned at her, impatient at her insistence. "Stop the talk," he told her harshly. "I'm not going. Go if you want to. But be still about it, let a man rest.... I'm tired, Faith.... I'm getting old...."

"You ought to look after getting the stuff for the ship," she reminded him. "After all—you are responsible for her...."

"Mr. Ham will do that, better than me," he said. "Go along."

She went out, reluctantly, and sought the mate. His boat and James Tichel's were to go ashore, leaving Dan'l in charge of the ship. He grinned cheerfully at Faith's request, and bade his men rig a stool to lower her into the boat. Faith protested, laughingly. "I can jump down, as well as a man," she said; and he nodded assent and forgot her.

She was in his boat when they put off presently; she sat astern, while Mr. Ham stood above her, his legs spread to steady himself against the movement of the boat, his weight on the long steering oar that he always preferred to the tiller. The Sally had dropped anchor a mile off shore, and canoes were already spinning out to her. The island spread before them, green and sparkling in the sun; and the white beach shone like silver.... It was more than a coral island; there were two hills, a mile or so inland; and the white-washed huts of a considerable village shone against the trees. The canoes met them, whirled about them; the black folk shouted and clamored and stared.... Mr. Ham waved to them, talked to them in a queer and outlandish mixture of tongues, bade them go on to the Sally.... "Mr. Tobey'll buy what they've got," he told Faith, as the whaleboat drove ahead for the shore.

James Tichel's boat was well astern of them, dragging a raft of floating casks which would be filled with water and towed out to the Sally. He was still far from shore when they drove up on the beach; and the men jumped out into the shallow water and dragged the boat higher, so that Faith, picking her way over the thwarts, could step ashore dry shod from the bow. Her feet left scarce a mark upon the hard, white sand.

Mr. Ham said to her: "You come up to the trees; you can be cool there while we're at our business."

But Faith shook her head. "I'm going to take a walk," she said. "I want to get into the woods. How long will you be here?"

He hesitated dubiously. "Guess it's all right if you do," he decided. "The niggers are friendly.... Most of 'em talk English, in a way. Go ahead."

"How long have I?" Faith asked again. He said they would be ashore an hour, perhaps more. "No matter, anyway," he told her. "Stay long as you like. Do you want I should send a man with you?"

Faith told him she was not afraid; he grinned. She turned southward along the beach, away from the huddled village. The smooth sand was so firm it jarred her feet, and she moved up into the shade of the trees, and followed them for a space, eyes probing into the tangle beyond them, lips smiling, every sense drinking in the smells of the land.... When she came, presently, to a well-marked path that led into the jungle-like undergrowth, she hesitated, then turned in.

Within twenty steps, the trees closed about her, shutting away all sight of the sea. For a little longer she could hear the long rollers pounding on the beach; then that sound, too, became indistinct and dim.... It was drowned in the thousand tiny noises of the brush about her. Bird-notes, crackling of twigs, stirring of furry things. Once a little creature of a sort she had never seen before, yet not unlike the familiar and universal rabbit, hopped out of her path in a flurry of excitement.

She heard, presently, another sound ahead of her; a sound of running, falling water; and when she pressed on eagerly, she came out upon the bank of a clear stream that dropped in bright cascades from one deep, cool pool to another. She guessed this stream must come down between the hills she had seen from the ship.... It was all the things she had unwittingly longed for during the months aboard the Sally. It was cool, and clear, and gay, and chuckling; the sea was always so turbulent and harsh. She followed the path that ran up the northern bank of the stream, and each new pool seemed more inviting than the last.... She wanted to wade into them, to feel the water on her shoulders and her throat and her arms.... Her smooth skin had revolted endlessly against the bite of the salt water in which she bathed aboard the Sally; it yearned for this cool, crystal flood....

She put aside this desire. The path she was following was a well-beaten trail. People must use it. They might come this way at any time.... She wished, wistfully, that she might be sure no one would come.... And so wishing, she pressed on, each new pool among the rocks wooing her afresh, and urging her to its cool embrace....

She heard, in the wood ahead of her, an increasing clamor of falling water, and guessed there might be a cascade there of larger proportions than she had yet seen. The path left the stream for a little, winding to round a tangle of thicker underbrush; and she hurried around this tangle, her eyes hungry to see the tumbling water she could hear....

Hurrying thus, she came out suddenly upon the lip of the pool.... Broad, and dark, and deep; its upper end walled by a sheet of plunging water that fell in a mirror-like veil and churned the pool to misty foam. Her eyes drank deep; they swung around the pool.... And then, she caught her breath, and shrank back a little, and pressed her hand to her throat....

Upon a rock, not fifty feet from her, his back half turned as he poised to dive, there stood a man. A white man, for all the skin of his whole body was golden-brown from long exposure to the open air.... He poised there like some wood god.... Faith had a strange feeling that she had blundered into a secret temple of the woods; that this was the temple's deity. She smiled faintly at her own fancy; smiled....

God has made nothing more beautiful than the human body, whether it be man's or woman's. Faith thought, in the instant that she watched, that this bronzed man of the woods was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.... She had no sense of shame in watching him; she had only joy in the sheer beauty of him, golden-brown against the green. And when, even as she first saw him, he leaped and swung, smooth and straight, high through the air, and turned with arms like arrows to pierce the bosom of the pool, she gasped a little, as one gasps on coming suddenly out upon a mountain top, with the world outspread below.... Then he was gone, with scarce a sound.... She saw for an instant the golden flash of him in the pool's depths....

His brown head broke the water, far across the way.... And he shook back his hair, and passed his hands across his face to clear his eyes.... His eyes opened....

His eyes opened, and he saw her standing there....

There were seconds on end that they remained thus, each held by the other's gaze. Faith could not, for her life, have stirred. The spell of the place was upon her. The man, for all his astonishment, was the first to find his tongue. He called softly across the water:

"Good morning, woman...."

His voice was so gentle, and at the same time so gay, that Faith was not alarmed. She smiled....

"It's after noon," she said. "Good afternoon—man!"

VIII

When Faith answered him, the man's face broke in smiles; he told her laughingly: "If you're so familiar with the habits of the sun, you must be a real woman, and not a dream at all.... I'm awake.... I am, am I not?"

"I should think you would be," said Faith. "That water must be cold enough to wake any one...."

He shook his head. "No, indeed. Just pleasantly cool. Dip your hand in it...."

Something led her to obey him; she bent by the pool's sandy brink and dabbled her fingers, while the man, a hundred feet away at the very foot of the waterfall, held his place with the effortless ease of an accustomed swimmer, and watched her. "Wasn't I right?" he challenged.

She nodded. "It's delicious...."

He said quickly: "You being here means that a ship is in, of course."

"Yes."

"What ship?"

"The Sally Sims—whaler...."

"The Sally! I know the Sally," the man cried. "Is Noll Wing still captain?..."

"Of course."

His eyes were thoughtful. "I'm in luck, woman," he said. "Listen. Will you do a thing for me?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I've a sort of a home, up on the hill above us here.... Observatory.... I've been waiting four months for a ship to come along, keeping a lookout from the top there.... Missed the Sally, somehow.... Must have come up after I came down...."

"We made the island a little before noon," she said.

He chuckled. "Ah, I was in my boudoir then.... I want to ship on the Sally. Does she need men?"

Her eyes clouded thoughtfully. "I—think so," she said. "They lost two, three days ago."

"What was it?" he asked quickly. "Fighting whale...."

She shook, her head. "Boat got lost ... and they were short of water. The jug wasn't fresh filled."

The man whistled softly. "That doesn't sound like one of Noll Wing's boats," he said. "Noll is a stickler on those things...."

Faith bowed her head, tracing a pattern in the sand with her forefinger. She said nothing. The man asked: "How long before they sail?"

"They're going to wait for me," she said.

His eyes lighted, and he chuckled. "Good. Now, listen.... If you'll be so kind as to turn your back.... You see, I've been running wild here for the past few months, and my clothes are all up at my place. I'll trot up there and get them and come back here.... Get a few things that I don't want to leave.... Will you turn your back?..." She had done so, and she heard the water stir as he raced for the shore and landed. "I'm going, now," he called.

"How long will you be?" she asked.

"Not over an hour," he told her. "About an hour."

"I'm afraid some one may come along this path.... Will they?... Should I hide from them?..."

He laughed. "Bless you, this is my private path; it's officially taboo to the natives, by special arrangement with the old witch doctor effect that runs their affairs. There won't be a soul along.... I'll be back in an hour...."

"I'll wait," she agreed softly. There was a light of mischief in her eyes. Still standing with her face down stream, she heard his bare feet pad the earth of the path for a moment before the sound was lost in the laughing of the waterfall.... A moment later, his shout: "I'm gone."

She sat down quickly on the sand, smiling to herself, sure of what she wished to do. She slipped off her shoes and her stockings with quick fingers; and she gathered her skirts high about her thighs and stepped with one foot and then another into the pleasant waters of the pool. They rippled around her ankles; she went deeper.... The waters played above her knees, while she balanced precariously in the swirling current and gathered her skirts high....

The water was soothing as Heaven itself, after the salt.... But she was not satisfied.... Merely wading.... She stood for a little, listening, gathering courage, striving to pierce the shadows of the bush about her with her eyes.... These first months of her marriage had driven a measure of her youth out of Faith; they had been sober days, and days more sober still were yet to come. But for this hour, a gay irresponsibility flooded her; she waded ashore, singing under her breath.... She began swiftly to loosen her skirt at the waist....

When the man came trotting down the trail at last, shouting ahead to her as he came, Faith was sitting demurely upon the sand, clothed and in her right mind.... She was trying to appear unconscious of the fact that around the back of her neck, and her pink little ears, wet tendrils of hair were curling.... When he came in sight, she rose gravely to meet him; and he looked at her with quick, keen eyes, and laughed.... She turned red as a flame....

"I don't blame you," he said. "It's a beautiful pool...."

She wanted to be angry with him; but she could not.... His laughter was infectious; she smiled at him. "I—couldn't resist it," she said....

She was studying the man. He wore, now, the accustomed garments of a seaman, the clothes which the men aboard the Sally wore. Harsh and awkward garments; yet they could not hide the graceful strength of the man. He was not so big as Noll, she thought; not quite as big as even Dan'l Tobey.... Yet there was such symmetry in his limbs and the breadth of his shoulders that he seemed a well-bulked man. His cheeks were lean and brown, and his lips met with a pleasant firmness.... A man naturally gay, she thought; yet with strength in him....

They started down the path toward the sea together. He carried a cloth-wrapped bundle, swinging in his hand. She looked at him sidewise; asked: "Who are you? How do you come to be here?"

"My name's Brander," he said. "I was third mate on the Thomas Morgan."

She tried to remember a whaler by that name. "New Bedford?" she asked.

"No.... Nantucketer."

Faith looked at him curiously. "But—what happened? Was she lost?..."

Brander's face was sober; he hesitated. "No, not lost," he said. He did not seem minded to go on; and Faith asked again:

"What happened?"

He laughed uneasily. "I left them," he said, and again seemed to wish to let the matter rest. But Faith would not.

"Is there any reason, why you should not tell me all about it?" she asked.

"No."

"Then tell me, please...."

He threw up his free hand in a gesture of surrender. "All right," he said....

They were following the narrow path down the stream's side toward the sea. Faith was ahead, Brander on her heels. After a moment, he went on....

"A man named Marks was the skipper of the Thomas Morgan. I shipped aboard her as a seaman. I'd had one cruise before.... Not with him. I shipped with him.... And I found out, within two days, that I'd made a mistake.

"Not that they were hard on me. I knew my job, after a fashion; and ... they let me alone. But the men had a tough time of it. It was a tough ship, through and through. Marks; and his mate.... Mate's name was Trant, and I'd not like to meet that man on a dark night. There was murder in him.... The sheer love of it.... He was the sort of man that will catch a shark just for the fun of spiking the creature's jaws and turning him loose again.... I was in Taku once.... Saw a little China boy catch a dragon fly and tie a twig to its tail and let it go. The twig overbalanced the dragon fly—It went straight up into the air, fast as it could wing.... May be going yet.... That was the sort of trick Trant would have liked.

"Not that he ever actually killed a man on this cruise. Better if he had, for the men. But he didn't.

"A big fellow. Heavy fisted; but he wasn't satisfied with the fist. The boot for him...."

They were climbing a little knoll in the path; he fell silent while they climbed; and Faith thought of Noll Wing and Mauger....

"Well," said Brander. "Well, you know how things drag along.... We dragged along.... Then, one day, we touched.... We'd gone around into the Japan Sea. Marks and Trant walked up to the second mate and took him, between them, into a boat, and took him ashore.... They came back without him. He was a man as big as Trant, but he had crossed Trant, more than once.... Trant had a face that was cut to ribbons when he came back aboard; but the other man did not come back at all. I never knew what the particular quarrel was....

"They shoved the third mate up to the second, and put me in as third. I said to myself: 'All right.... But don't go to sleep, Brander.' And I didn't. It didn't pay.... I couldn't."

He waved his hand as though to dismiss what followed with a word.... Nevertheless, he went on:

"There was a man in my boat.... He was called 'Lead-Foot' by every one, because he was a slow-moving man. He was not good for much. He was very much afraid of every one. Especially Trant. He was bigger than Trant, so Trant took a certain satisfaction from abusing him. I decided to interfere with this. I told this big coward who was in my boat to keep out of Trant's way; and I told Trant, jokingly, one day, to leave my men alone. He was huffed at that; growled at me." Brander chuckled. "So I swelled up my chest like a fighting cock and told him to keep hands off. Oh, I threw a great bluff, I can tell you. But Trant was not a coward. He waited his time; and I knew he was waiting....

"And while he waited, he talked to the captain; and I could see them both whispering together. They whispered about me. They did not like to have me about; and once Marks threatened to put me back in the fo'c's'le; but he changed his mind.

"So matters were till we came past an island to the north of here, forty or fifty miles. We made that island at dusk, and worked nearer it after darkness had fallen. It came on cloudy and dark....

"I met Trant on the deck; and I said to him: 'Do we go ashore here?' He grinned at me with his teeth and bade me wait till morning and see. And that was enough for me. I knew what was coming. I thought I would hurry it a little; but luck hurried it for me, in a way that worked out very well.

"This lead-footed man was at the wheel. When the anchor went down, he started forward and brushed against Trant. Trant may have meant it to be so. Anyway, Trant knocked the lead-foot flying, and went after him with the boot, jumping, as lumbermen do. There happened to be a belaying pin handy. So I took it and cracked Trant, and he dropped in mid-leap.... Then Marks jumped me; and I managed to wriggle out from under him, and he fell and banged his head. And he lay still; but Trant was up, by then, and at me.

"The lead-footed man was yelling in my ear. I told him to go overboard and swim for it; and he did. And just then Trant got in the way of the belaying pin again, and this time he did not seem to want to get up.

"There was some confusion, you understand. I did not stay to straighten things out. I went over, after Lead-Foot.... He could swim like a porpoise. He was ahead of me, but half way in he met a shark, and came clamoring back to me to be saved. So I got out of his way for fear he would drag us both under, and then I kicked at the shark, and it went about its business, and we swam on.... They were too busy sluicing the Old Man and Trant to come after us in a boat.... They could have knocked us in the head with an oar.... But they didn't....

"However, Lead-Foot took the shark so seriously that he swam too fast. Or something of the sort.... Anyway, he keeled when we touched sand, and I felt him and found that he was dead with heart failure or the like. I didn't stop to work over him. I could hear Trant bellowing. He had come to life; and a boat was racing after me.

"So I went into the bush and stayed there till the Thomas Morgan took herself off. After that, not liking the island, which was low and marshy, I borrowed a native canoe and came over here.... And I've been here, since."

They were within sound of the rollers on the beach when he finished. Faith was silent for a little; then she asked: "Were there other white men here? Why didn't you stay at the village?"

"There was too much society there," said Brander, grinning amiably. "I'm a solitary man, by nature. So I went up into the hills. Besides, I could watch for ships, there.... I'd no notion of staying here indefinitely, you understand...."

Faith was filling out the gaps in his narrative from her own understanding of the life aboard a whaler. She could guess what Brander must have endured; she thought he had done well to come through it and still smile.... She thought he was a man....

They could see the surf, through the thinning bush, when he said: "You haven't told me how you happen to be aboard the Sally Sims...."

Faith had almost forgotten, herself. She remembered, and something like a chill of sorrow struck down upon her. But: "I am Noll Wing's wife," she said.

They came out, abruptly, into the white glare of the beach, Mr. Ham's boat was drawn up, a quarter-mile away. Brander looked toward it, looked at Faith.

"Ah," he said quietly. "Then yonder is your husband's boat, waiting.... Noll Wing is an able skipper...."

Faith said nothing. They went on, side by side, toward Mr. Ham.

IX

When Mr. Ham, waiting by the boat with his men, saw Faith coming and saw the stranger at her side, he came to meet them. His bearing was inclined to truculence. Faith was ashore here in his charge; if this man had disturbed her....

Faith reassured him. "I've a hand for you, Mr. Ham," she called. "You need men."

Mr. Ham stopped, ten paces from them, with legs spread wide. He looked from Faith to Brander. Brander smiled in a friendly way. "Can you use me?" he asked. "I know the work."

Mr. Ham frowned thoughtfully. "What's this, ma'am?" he asked Faith. "Who's that man?"

Faith said quietly: "Ask him. I believe he wants to ship. I told him we were short."

The mate looked to Brander. His attitude toward Faith had been deferential; toward Brander he assumed unconsciously the terrorizing frown which he was accustomed to turn upon the men. "What do you want?" he challenged.

Brander said pleasantly: "To ship with you."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was third mate on the Thomas Morgan," said Brander.

"Cap'n Marks?" Mr. Ham asked.

"Yes."

"We've no use for any o' Marks's mates aboard the Sally."

Brander smiled. "I wasn't thinking of shipping as mate. Can you use a hand?"

"Where's the Thomas Morgan?"

"On th' Solander Grounds, likely."

"How come you're not with her?"

"I left them, hereabouts."

"Left them?"

"Yes."

"They've not the name of letting men go."

"They had no choice. They were—otherwise engaged when I took my leave."

"That's a slovenly ship," said Mr. Ham.

"One reason why I'm not on her now."

The mate frowned. "I'm not saying it's not in your favor that you got away from them.... And we do need men." He added hastily: "Men; not officers."

"That suits me."

Mr. Ham looked around. Faith stood a little at one side, listening quietly. The Sally rocked on the swells outside.... "Well, come aboard," said the mate. "See what the Old Man says."

Brander nodded. "Thanks, sir," he said. He adopted, easily and without abasement, the attitude of a fo'mast hand toward the officer, and went ahead of the mate and Faith to stow his bundle in the boat. The other men waiting there questioned him; but they all fell silent as Mr. Ham and Faith came to where the boat waited.

Tichel had already taken the water casks out to the whaler. The men took the whaleboat and dragged it down to the water. When it was half afloat, Faith and the mate got in. The men shoved off, wading till the water was deep enough for them to clamber aboard and snatch their oars and push out through the rollers.... They worked desperately for a little, till they were clear of the turbulent waters of the beach; then settled to their work....

Brander sat amidships, his bundle at his feet, lending a hand now and then on the oar of the man who faced him. Once he looked toward Faith; she met his eyes.... Neither spoke, neither smiled.... The island was receding behind them; Brander turned to watch it. They drew alongside the Sally.

Dan'l Tobey was at the rail to receive them. The mate stood in the tossing boat and lifted Faith easily to Dan'l at the rail; he swung her aboard. Mr. Ham followed; then Brander; then the men. The mate saw to the unloading of the boat, saw it safely stowed. Then turned to Brander, "Come and see the Old Man," he said.

Dan'l Tobey heard. "He's asleep," he told Mr. Ham. "Who is this?"

The mate said: "He wants to ship. Says he was on the Thomas Morgan."

Dan'l looked at Brander. Mr. Ham added: "The captain's wife found him in the bush."

Dan'l drawled: "Beach comber.... Eh?"

Brander said respectfully: "No, sir. I lived on the hill, there.... The highest one. You can make out my place with the glass...."

"He was third mate on the Thomas Morgan," said Mr. Ham.

"We don't need an officer," Dan'l suggested. Brander sensed the fact that Dan'l disliked him; he wondered at it.

"I'm asking to ship as a seaman, sir," he said.

Mr. Ham looked at Dan'l. "Best speak to the captain?" he asked.

"Oh, set him ashore," Dan'l suggested. "He's a troublemaker. Too wise for the fo'c's'le...." He looked to Brander insolently. "Can't you see he's a man of education, Mr. Ham? What would he want to ship before the mast for?"

Mr. Ham looked puzzled. "How about it?" he asked Brander sharply. Brander smiled.

"I did it, in the beginning, for sport," he said. "Now I'm doing it to get home. If you need a man.... If not, I'll go ashore...."

Faith, standing by, said quietly: "Ship him, Mr. Ham." Her words were not a request; they were a command. Dan'l looked at her swiftly, shrewdly. Mr. Ham obeyed, with the instant instinct of obedience to that tone....

It was not till days later that Faith wondered why she had spoken; wondered why she had ventured to command.... And wondered why Mr. Ham obeyed.... It gave her, somehow, a sense of power.... He had obeyed her, as he would have obeyed Noll, her husband....

At the moment, however, having spoken, she went below.... She went quickly, a little confused. She found Noll asleep, as Dan'l had said; and she did not wake him. The Sally got to sea.... The island fell into the sea behind them. Before it was fully gone, Faith, with the captain's glass, had searched that highest hill from the windows of the after cabin; she discerned a little clearing, a rude hut.... Brander's home....

She watched it for a space; then put the glass aside with thoughtful eyes.

Brander's coming, in ways that could hardly be defined, eased the tension aboard the Sally. When the man went forward to stow his belongings in the fo'c's'le, he found the men surly.... Quarrelsome.... They looked at him sidewise.... They covertly inspected him....

The men of a whaler's crew are a polyglot lot, picked up from the gutters and the depths. There were good men aboard the Sally, strong men, who knew their work.... Some of them had served Noll Wing before; some had made more than one voyage on the ships of old Jonathan Felt. There was loyalty in these men, and a pride in their tasks.... But there were others who were slack; and there were others who were evil.... The green hands had been made over into able seamen, according to a whaler's standard; and some of them had become men in the process, and some had become something less than men. Yet they all knew their work, and did it....

But they were, when Brander came among them, surly and ugly. In the days that followed, tending strictly to his own work, he nevertheless found time to study them.... A man with a tongue naturally gay, and a smile that inspired friendship, he began to jest with them.... And little by little, they responded.... Their surliness passed....

The officers felt the change. Willis Cox, still half sick from the ordeal that had killed two of his men, took Brander into his boat. Brander was only a year or two older than Willis, but he was vastly more mature.... He knew men, and he knew the work of the ship; and Willis liked him. He let Brander have his way with the other men, and his liking for the newcomer led him to speak of it in the cabin, at supper one night. "He's a good man," he said. "The men like him."

Dan'l Tobey said pleasantly: "He's after your berth, Will. Best watch him."

Willis said honestly: "He knows more about the work than I do. I don't blame him. But—he keeps where he belongs...."

"He will ... till he sees his chance," Dan'l agreed. "Don't let him get away from you."

Old James Tichel grinned malignantly. "Nor don't let him get in my way, Mr. Cox," he said, showing his teeth. "I do not like the cut of him."

The mate looked at Cap'n Noll Wing; but Noll was eating, he seemed not to have heard. Faith, at her husband's side, said nothing. So Mr. Ham kept out of the discussion. Only he wondered—he was not a discerning man—why Dan'l disliked the newcomer. Brander seemed to Mr. Ham to be a lucky find; they had needed a man, they had found a first-rater. That was his view of the matter.

Brander's coming had worked like a leaven among the men. That was patent to every one.... But this was not necessarily a good thing. A dominant man in the fo'c's'le is, if the man be evil, a dangerous matter. The officers rule their men by virtue of the fact that the men are not united. Union among the men against the officers breeds mutiny.... Dan'l said as much, now.

"He'll get the men after him like sheep," he said angrily. "Then—look out."

"We can handle that," said Mr. Ham.

Dan'l grinned. "Aye, that's what is always said—till it is too late to handle them. The man ought to have been left on the beach, where he belonged."

Faith said quietly: "I spoke for him. It seems to me he does his work."

Dan'l looked up quickly, a retort on his lips; but he remembered himself in time. "I'm wrong," he said frankly. "Brander is a good man. No doubt the whole matter will turn out all right...."

Cap'n Wing, finishing his dinner, said fretfully: "There's too much talk of this man. I'm sick of it. Keep an eye on him, Mr. Ham. If he looks sidewise, clip him. But don't talk so much...."

The mate nodded seriously. "I'll watch him, sir."

Dan'l said: "I've no right to talk against him, sir. No doubt he's all right."

Noll shook his great head like a horse that is harassed by a fly. "I tell you I want no more words about him, Mr. Tobey. Be still." He got up and stalked into his cabin. Faith followed him. The officers, one by one, went on deck. Willis, there, came to Dan'l.

"You really think he means trouble, Mr. Tobey?"

Dan'l smiled. "If he were in my boat, I'd keep an eye peeled," he said.

Young Willis Cox set his jaw. "By God, I will that," he swore.

Dan'l pointed forward; and Willis looked and saw Brander talking with Mauger, the one-eyed man, by the lee rail. "Mark that," said Dan'l. "They're a chummy pair, those two."

Willis frowned. "That's queer, too," he said. "Mauger—he's not much of a man. Why should Brander take up with him, anyhow?"

Dan'l smiled, sidewise. "Does Mauger—Is Mauger the captain's man?" he asked.

"No. Hates him like death and hell."

"And Brander plays up to him...."

"Because Mauger hates the Old Man. Is that it?" Willis asked anxiously.

"I'm saying no word," protested Dan'l Tobey. "See for yourself, Will."

X

Roy Kilcup was another who did not like Brander. This was in part a consequence of his position on the Sally, in part the result of Dan'l Tobey's skillful tongue. Dan'l saw the tendency in Roy, and capitalized it.

Roy lived in the cabin, where his duties as ship's boy kept him for most of the time. It was true that in pay he ranked below the men, that he was of small account in the general scheme of work aboard the whaler; but he lived in the cabin, he was of the select, and to that extent he was set apart from the men. Also, he was the brother of the captain's wife, and that gave him prestige.

There was no great harm in Roy, but he was at that age where boys worship men, and not always the best men. Also, he was at what might be called the cocky age. He felt that the fact of his living in the cabin made him superior to the men who hived in the fo'c's'le; and this feeling showed itself in his attitude toward them. He liked to order them around.... They were for the most part willing to obey him in the minor matters with which he concerned himself.

Roy saw, as soon as any one, that Brander was a man above the average. The day Brander was found on the island, he had gone ashore with Mr. Tichel, and roved through the little native village, and returned to the ship with the third mate before Faith appeared. Faith had suggested that he go with her, but the boy scorned the notion of poking through the woods.... He was thus back on the ship when Brander appeared.... But he heard Dan'l Tobey object to the man, and he took his cue from Dan'l. He disliked Brander.

This dislike was accentuated by a small thing which happened in the second week Brander was on the Sally. They had killed a whale and cut it in; and because the weather was bad, it had been a task for all hands. The men were tired; but after the job was done, the regular watches were resumed.... Dan'l Tobey's watch, which included Brander, took first turn at scrubbing up; and when they went off and the other watch came on, Roy was forward, fishing over the bow. He saw the tired men trooping forward and dropping into the fo'c's'le; and he hailed Brander.

"You, Brander," he called, in his shrill, boy's voice. "Get my other line, from the starboard rail, under the boathouse. Look sharp, now!"

Now Roy had no right in the world to give orders, except as a messenger of authority, and Brander knew this. So Brander said amiably: "Sorry, youngster. I'm tired. Your legs are spry as mine...."

And he descended into the fo'c's'le with no further word, while Roy's face blazed with humiliation, and the men who had heard laughed under their breath. Some boys would have stormed, beaten out their strength in futile efforts to compel Brander to do their bidding; Roy had cooler blood in him. He fell abruptly silent; he went on with his fishing.... But he did not forget....

He told Dan'l Tobey about it. Dan'l was his confidant, in this as in other things. And Dan'l comforted him.

"Best forget it, Roy," he said. "No good in going to the Old Man. The man was right.... He didn't have to do it...."

"There was no reason why he should be impertinent," Roy blazed. "He holds himself too high."

"Well, I'll not say he does not," Dan'l agreed. "Same time, it never hurts to wait." And he added, a little uncomfortably, as though he were unwilling to make the suggestion: "Besides, your sister shipped the man. She'd have the say, in any trouble."

"I guess not," Roy stoutly boasted. "I guess she's nothing but a woman. I guess Noll Wing is the boss around here."

"Sure," said Dan'l. "Sure. But—let's wait a bit."

This pleased Roy; it had a mysteriously ominous sound. He waited; and he fell into the way of watching Brander, spying on the man, keeping the newcomer constantly under his eye. Brander marked this at once, smiled good-humoredly....

Brander and Faith saw very little of each other in those days; they exchanged no words whatever, save on one day when Brander had the wheel and Faith nodded to him and bade him good morning. For the rest, the convention of the deck kept Brander forward of the tryworks; and Faith never went forward. But now and then their eyes met, across the length of the Sally; and one night at the cutting in, she heard Brander singing a chanty to inspire the men as they tugged at the capstan bars.... He sang well, a clear voice and a true one. In the shadows of the after deck, she listened thoughtfully.

Dan'l came upon her there, when he paused for a moment in his work. He saw her before she saw him, saw her face illumined by the light of the flare in the rigging above the tryworks. And for a moment he stood, watching; and the man's lip twisted....

That moment was a turning point in Dan'l Tobey's life. Before, there had been a measure of good in the man; he had loved Faith well and decently.... His capacity for mischief had been curbed. But in those seconds while he studied Faith's countenance as she listened to Brander's singing, he saw something that curdled the venom in the man. When he stepped nearer, and she heard him, he was a different Dan'l.... The stocky, round-faced, freckled, sandy young man had become a power for evil.... He was to use this power thenceforward without scruple....

Faith smiled at him; he said pleasantly: "The man sings well."

"Yes," Faith agreed. "I like it."

Then Dan'l turned back to his tasks, and Faith slipped down into the cabin where Noll was, and offered to read aloud to her husband. Noll sleepily agreed; he went to sleep, presently, while she read. When she saw he was asleep, she dropped her book in her lap and studied the sleeping man; and suddenly her eyes filled, so that she went down on her knees beside him, and laid her arms gently about his shoulders, and whispered pleadingly:

"Oh, Noll, Noll...."

Roy Kilcup, coming up from the cabin one day, saw Dan'l Tobey strike a man. He saw this at the moment his head rose above the companion. Dan'l and the man were amidships, and Dan'l cuffed him and drove him forward.

Dan'l was not given to blows; he seldom needed to use them. So Roy was curious. He went forward along the deck, and touched Dan'l's elbow, and pointed after the cuffed man and asked huskily:

"What's the matter? What did he do?"

Dan'l had not seen Roy coming. He took a moment to think before he answered; then he said in a fashion that indicated his unwillingness to tell the truth:

"Oh—nothing. He was spitting on the deck."

Now a whaler is, when she is doing her work, a dirty craft; she is never overly clean at best. But it is never permitted, on a ship that pretends to decency, to spit upon the deck. Any man who did that on the Sally would have been punished with the utmost rigor; and Roy knew this as well as Dan'l. And Dan'l knew that Roy knew. Roy grinned youthfully, protested:

"Oh, say, what's the secret about? What did he do?"

Dan'l smiled in a way that admitted his misstatement; he shook his head. "Nothing," he said.

Roy looked angry. "Keep it to yourself if you want to." He had known Dan'l all his life, and had no awe of him. "Don't tell if you don't want to. If it's a secret, I guess I can keep still about it as well as any one."

Dan'l looked sorrowful. "Just forget it, Roy," he said. "It doesn't matter."

Roy flamed at him. "All right.... Keep it to yourself."

And Dan'l yielded reluctantly. "Well, if you've got to know," he said, "I'll tell you.... He was laughing at Brander's story of why Faith brought him aboard the ship here."

Roy's cheeks began to burn. "Brander.... What did Brander say?"

Dan'l shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't hear. He wasn't here at the time. Probably didn't say anything. Probably the men just made it up. The fo'c's'le is a dirty place, you know, Roy. Dirty men.... And dirty talk...."

Roy said hotly: "By God, I won't have them talking about my sister...."

"I felt the same way," Dan'l agreed. "But—you can't do anything."

"What did Brander say? The sneak...."

"I don't know that he said anything," Dan'l insisted. "Probably not. I just heard this man snickering, and telling two others something.... Heard him name Brander, and your sister.... So I struck in. The others were just listening. They got out of the way. I asked this man what he said; and he wouldn't tell me, so I hit him a clip and told him to keep his tongue still...."

Roy whirled to look forward. The deck was all but empty, but Brander and another man were by the knight's heads, talking casually together. Roy said under his breath: "I'm going to...."

Dan'l caught his arm. "Wait...."

Roy shook loose. "No. This is my family affair, Dan'l. Let me alone...." He started forward. Dan'l hesitated; then he drew back, turned aft, stopped, watched.... He took a malicious pleasure in seeing what would happen.

Brander had seen Roy coming; he was watching the boy, and smiling a little. The other man's back was turned. Roy strode forward, head up, eyes blazing; he kept on till he was face to face with Brander; he stopped, and his hands trembled.

"You, Brander," he said thickly. "You keep your tongue off my...."

Brander moved like a flash of light. He swung Roy to him, swung the boy around, pinned his arms with one of his own, clapped his hand over Roy's mouth.... He lifted the boy easily and carried him, thus pinned and gagged, aft as far as the tryworks. The other man stared in astonishment; Dan'l took a step nearer the two. The others were out of easy hearing when Brander stopped. Still holding Roy's mouth he said quietly:

"Don't lose your head, youngster. You'll only do harm. Speak quietly. What do you want to say?"

He released Roy and stepped back; and again Roy showed that he was more than a boy. He did not spring at Brander; he did not curse; he did not weep. He stood, straight as a wire, and his eyes were blazing. His voice, when he found it, was husky and low, so that none but Brander could hear.

"I don't know what you're saying about my sister," said Roy. "Whatever it is, it's not true. If you say it again, I'll kill you."

Brander's eyes shadowed unhappily. He asked: "Why do you think I have said anything?"

"No matter," said Roy harshly. "I know. Keep your tongue between your lips, or I'll shoot you like a yellow dog. That's all...."

He swung abruptly, and went aft so quickly that Brander made no move to stop him. Dan'l came quietly across the waist of the ship as Brander took a step after Roy. "Get forward, Brander," he said.

Brander nodded pleasantly; he said: "Yes, sir."

And he went back to the forward deck, his eyes troubled. He fought, that afternoon, with one of the hands, and whipped the man soundly. Dan'l Tobey reported this in the cabin that evening; and Mr. Ham frowned and said:

"He'd best learn we'll do all the fist work that's done aboard here."

Dan'l smiled. "He was an officer once," he reminded the mate. "It's a habit hard to break."

Big Noll was there; he seemed not to listen. His attitude toward the new man was still in doubt. Dan'l Tobey was wondering about it; and so was Faith. It was to be decided, two days later, in a fashion peculiarly dramatic.

Mauger, the one-eyed man, had an increasing hold on the imagination of Noll Wing. The captain encountered the other wherever he went; and he never encountered Mauger without an uneasy feeling that was half dread, half remorse. He could not bear to look at Mauger's face, with the dreadful hollow covered by the twitching lid; and Mauger sensed this and put himself in the captain's path whenever he had the opportunity. Noll wished he could be rid of the one-eyed man; and in his moments of rage, he thought murderously of Mauger. But for the most part, he feared and dreaded the other, and shivered at the little man's malicious and incessant chuckling.

Again and again he spoke to Faith of Mauger, voicing his fear, wishing that she might reassure him; till Faith wearied of it, and would say no more. He spoke of his dread to Mr. Ham, who thought he was joking and laughed at him harshly. Mr. Ham lacked imagination.

Brander, as has been said, was friendly with Mauger. He was sorry for the little man; and he found in Mauger a singularly persistent spirit of cheer which he liked. He was, for that matter, a friend of all the men in the fo'c's'le, but because Mauger was marked by the cabin, his friendship for Mauger was more frequently noted. Dan'l had seen it, had pointed it out to Willis Cox....

Cap'n Wing came on deck one afternoon, a few minutes before the masthead man sighted a pod of whales to the southward. The captain was more cheerful than he had been for days; he was filled with something like the vigor of his more youthful days. There was a joyful turbulence in him, like the exuberance of an athlete.... He stamped the deck, striding back and forth....

When the whales were sighted, the men sprang to the boats. Mauger, since Willis Cox's tragic experience, had been put in the fourth mate's boat with Brander, to fill the empty places there. Brander and Mauger were side by side in their positions as they prepared the boat for lowering. But the whales were still well away, the Sally could cruise nearer them, and Noll Wing did not at once give the signal to lower. He stalked along the deck....

As he passed where Mauger stood, he marked that the line in the after tub was out of coil a little. That might mean danger, when the whale was struck and the line whistled like a snake as it ran. Noll Wing stopped and swore sulphurously and bade Mr. Cox put his boat in order. Willis snapped: "Mauger, stow that line."

Mauger reached for the tub, but his single eye had not yet learned accurately to judge distance; he fumbled; and Brander, at his side, saw his fumbling, and reached out and coiled the line with a single motion....

Noll Wing saw; and he barked:

"Brander!"

Brander looked around. "Yes, sir."

"When a man can't do his own work here, we don't want him. Keep your hands off Mauger's tasks."

Brander said respectfully: "I helped him without thinking, sir. Thought the thing was to do the work, no matter who...."

Noll Wing stepped toward him; and his eyes were blazing, not so much with anger as with sheer exuberance of strength. He roared: "Don't talk back to me, you...."

And struck.

Now Noll Wing was proud of his fists, and proud of his eye; and for fifteen years he had not failed to down his man with a single blow. But when he struck at Brander, a curious thing happened....

Brander's head moved a little to one side, his shoulders shifted.... And Noll's big fist shot over Brander's right shoulder. The captain's weight threw him forward; Brander stepped under Noll's arm. The two men met, face to face, their eyes not six inches apart. Noll's were blazing ferociously; but in Brander's a blue light flickered and played....

The men waited, not breathing; the officers stepped a little nearer. Dan'l Tobey licked his lips. This would be the end of Brander.... It was not etiquette to dodge the Old Man's blows....

But, amazingly, after seconds of silence, Noll Wing's grim face relaxed; he chuckled.... He laughed aloud, and clapped Brander on the shoulder. "Good man.... Good man!"

Mr. Ham called: "We'll gally the sparm...."

And Noll turned, and waved his hand. "Right," he said. "Lower away, boats...."

The lean craft struck the water, the men dropped in, the chase was on.

XI

When the boats left the Sally, Mr. Ham's in the lead as of right, Faith came from the after deck to where Noll stood by the rail and touched his arm. He turned and looked down at her.... He was already regretting what had happened. His recognition of Brander's courage had been the last flame of nobility from the man's soul; he was to go down, thereafter, into lower and lower depths.... He was already regretful and ashamed....

Faith touched his arm; he looked down and saw pride and happiness in her eyes; and with the curious lack of logic of the male, he was the more ashamed of what he had done because she was proud of him for it. She said softly:

"That was fine, Noll."

"Fine—hell!" he said hoarsely. "I ought to have smashed him."

Faith smiled; she shook her head.... Her hand rested on his arm; and as he turned to look after the departing boats, she leaned a little against him. He mumbled: "Fool.... That's what I was. I ought to have smashed him. Now he—every man aboard—they'll think they can pull it on me...." His big fists clenched. "By God, I'll show 'em. I'll string him up for a licking, time he gets back."

"I was—very proud," she said. "If you had struck him, I should have been ashamed."

"That's the woman of it," he jeered. "Damn it, Faith; you can't run a whaler with kisses...."

She studied his countenance. He was flushed, nervous, his lips moving.... He took off his cap to wipe his forehead; and his bald head and his gray hair and the slack muscles of his cheeks reminded her again that he was an old, an aging man.... She felt infinitely sorry for him; she patted his arm comfortingly.

He shook her off. "Yes, by God," he swore. "When he gets back, I'll tie him up and give him the rope.... Show the dog...."

Roy had come up behind them; neither had heard him. The boy cried: "That's right, sir. The man thinks he's running the Sally, sir. You've got to handle him."

Faith said: "Roy, be still."

He flamed at her: "You don't know what you're talking about, Sis. You're just a girl."

Noll said impatiently: "Don't have one of your rows, now. I'm sick of 'em. Roy, go down in the cabin and stay there...."

"I can't see the boats from there," the boy complained. Noll turned on him; and Roy backed away and disappeared. Noll watched the boats, dwindling into specks across the sea.... Beyond he could see, now and then, the white spouts of the whales. Once a great fluke was lazily upreared.... Faith watched beside him.

Whether, in the normal course of things, Noll would have carried out his threat to whip Brander cannot be known. Chance, the dark chance of the whale-fisheries, intervened.

Tragedy always hangs above a whaling vessel. This must be so when six men in a puny boat with slivers of iron and steel go out to slay a creature with the strength of six hundred men. When matters go well, they strike their whale, the harpoon makes him fast, he runs out his strength, they haul alongside and prod him with the lance, he dies.... But there are so many ways in which matters may go wrong. The sea is herself a treacherous hussy, when she consorts with the wind, and becomes drunk with his caresses. Under his touch she swells and breaks tempestuously; she writhes and flings herself about.... Her least wave can, if it chooses, smash the thin sides of a whaleboat and rob the men in it of their strength and shelter; her gentlest tussle with her consort wind can overwhelm them....

And if the sea be merciful, there remain her creatures. She is the wide, blue pasture of the whale; a touch of his flukes, a crunch of his jaw, a roll of his great bulk is enough to crush out the lives of a score of men. If he had wit to match his size, he would be invulnerable; as it is, men with their wits for weapons can strike and kill him in the waters that are his own. It is rare to encounter a fighting whale, a creature that deliberately sets itself to destroy the attacking boats; the tragedies of the whale-fisheries are more often mere incidents, slight mischances, matters of small importance to the whale....

A little, little thing and men die.

This day, the day when Brander faced Noll Wing and went unscathed, was bright and fair, with a gentle turbulent wind, and a dancing sea. It was warm upon the waters; the sun burned down upon them and its glare and its heat were reflected from them.... The skin of men's faces was scorched by it. The men, tugging at the oars in the boats, sweated and strove; the perspiration streamed down their cheeks, trickled along the straining cords of their necks, slid down their broad chests.... Their shirts clung to them wetly; they welcomed the flying spray that lashed them now and then.

The pod of whales was perhaps five miles from the Sally when the boats were lowered; but the wind was favoring, and its pressure upon the sail helped them on for a space. When half the distance was covered, the oars were discarded as the boats swung around with the wind almost dead astern, and headed straight for the whales' lay. Before they reached the basking, sporting creatures, the whales sounded; and it was necessary for the men to lie upon their oars and wait for a full half hour before the first spout showed the cachalots were back from their browsing in the ocean caves below. The boats swung around and headed toward them, sails pulling....

Mr. Ham's boat was in the lead; for that is the right of the mate. The others were closely bunched behind him; and as they drew near the pod, they separated somewhat, so that each might strike a whale. Dan'l Tobey went southward, where a lone bull lay with the waves breaking over his black bulk. Willis Cox and Tichel swung to the north of the mate, into the thick of the pod.

The mate marked down his whale; a fat cow that would yield full seventy barrels. He was steering; Silva, the harpooner, stood in the bow, knee braced, ready with his irons. The men amidships prepared to bring down mast and sail at the word, and stow them safely away so that they might not hinder the battle that would come. The boat drove smoothly on.... Mr. Ham, looking north and south, saw that the others were drawing up abreast of him, so that they would strike the whales at about the same time. He thought comfortably that with a little luck they would kill two whales, or perhaps three. That each boat should kill was too much to be hoped for.

Then he gave his attention to his own prey. They slipped up on the basking cow from almost dead astern, slid alongside her; and Mr. Ham swung hard on the steering oar. The boat came into the wind; he bellowed:

"Now, Silva; give her iron."

The harpooner moved quick as light, for all the power of the thrust he put behind his stroke. He sank his first iron; snatched his second, drove it home as the whale stirred.... Threw overboard the loose line coiled forward.... The whale ran.

The sail came fluttering down, mast and all; and the four men amidships rolled it awkwardly, stowed it along the gunwale.... Silva and the mate, at the same time, were changing places in the boat. Silva, the harpooning done, would now come into his proper function as boat-steerer. It is the task of the mates to kill the whales. The boat, half smothered in canvas, with Silva and Mr. Ham passing from end to end, and the whale line already running out through the chock in the bow, was a picture of confusion thrice confounded.

In this confusion, anything was possible; anything might happen. What did happen was humiliating and ridiculous.

When Silva struck home the harpoons, he flung overboard a length of line coiled by his knee. This slack line would allow the whale to run free while the sail was coming down and he and the mate were changing places. He threw it overboard—and failed to mark that one loop of it caught on the point of one of the spare irons in the rack with the lances, at the bow. He leaped for the stern, groped past Mr. Ham amidships....

The whale was running. As Mr. Ham reached the bow, the line drew taut. That loop which had caught across the point of the harpoon was straightened like a flash.

Now a harpoon is shaped, not like an arrow, but like a slanting blade. It has a single barb; and the forward side of this barb is razor-sharp. This razor edge cuts into the blubber and flesh; then the shank of the barb grips and holds. But the edge that will cut blubber will also cut hemp....

The loop of whale line was dragged firmly back along this three-inch blade; it cut through as though a knife had done the trick, and the whale was gone with two irons and thirty fathoms of line. Mr. Ham and his boat bobbed placidly upon the water; and Mr. Ham looked, saw what had happened, and spoke sulphurously. Then looked about to see what might be done.

It was too late to think of getting fast to another whale. The pod was gallied; the great creatures were fleeing. After them went James Tichel in his boat, the spray sluicing up from her bows. Tichel was fast; the whale was running with him.... Mr. Ham looked from Tichel for the other boats. He saw Dan'l Tobey in distress. A whale had risen gently under them, opening the seams of their craft; and they were half full of water and sinking. They had cut.

Willis Cox had hold of a whale; and this one had sounded. Ham saw Willis in the bow, watching the line that went straight down from the chock into the water. This line was running out like a whip-lash, though Willis put on it all the strain it would bear without dragging the boat's bow under. It ran down and down....

Mr. Ham rowed across; and Willis called to him: "Big fellow. But he's taken one tub."

"Give him to me," Mr. Ham said.

Willis shook his head. "I'd like to handle him. Get me the line from Mr. Tobey's boat. He's mine."

Mr. Ham grinned. "All right; if you're minded to work...." He swung quickly to where Dan'l and his men floated to their waists in water, the boat under them. "Takin' a swim?" he asked, grinning.

Dan'l nodded. "Just that. You cut, I see. Why was that, now?"

Mr. Ham stopped grinning and looked angry. "Pass over your tubs," he ordered; and Dan'l's men obeyed. Mr. Ham took the fresh line to Willis....

He was no more than just in time. "The black devil's still going," Willis said. "Second tub's all but gone...."

"Bound for hell, more'n like," Mr. Ham agreed. "Hold him."

Dan'l's line was running out by this time; for Willis had worked quickly.... And still the whale went down.... Mr. Ham stood by, waiting.... The line ran out steadily; the whale showed no signs of rising. The bow of Willis's boat was held down within inches of the water by the strain he kept upon the line. One tub was emptied; he began to look anxious.... And the whale kept going down.

Mr. Ham said abruptly: "There.... Pass over your line. He'll be gone on you, first you know."

Willis looked at the smoking line.... And reluctantly, he surrendered. With no more than seconds to spare, the end of his line was made fast to the cut end of Mr. Ham's, and the whale continued to go down. He had taken all the line of two boats—and wanted more.

"He's hungry," Mr. Ham grinned, watching the running rope. "Gone down for supper, likely."

And a moment later, his eyes lighting:

"There.... Getting tired.... Or struck bottom, maybe."

They could all see that the line had slackened. The bow of Mr. Ham's boat rode at a normal level; the line hung loose. And the mate turned around and bellowed to his men:

"Haul in."

They began to take in the line, hand over hand; it fell in a wide coil amidships, overlapping the sides, spreading.... A coil that grew and grew. They worked like mad.... The only way to kill a whale is to pull up on him until your boat rides against his very flank. All the line this creature had stolen must be recovered, before he could be slain.... They toiled with racing hands....

Mr. Ham began to look anxiously over the bow, down into the blue water from which the line came up. "He's near due," he said.

It is one of the curious and fatal habits of a sounding whale to rise near the spot where he went down. It is as though the creatures followed a well-known path into the depths and up again. This is not always true; often a whale that has sounded will take it into his mind to run, will set off at a double-pace. But in most cases, the whale comes up near where he disappeared.... The men knew this. Dan'l Tobey, in his sinking boat, worked away from the neighborhood to give the mate room. So did Willis. And Mr. Ham, leaning one knee on the bow, peering down into the water, his lance ready in his hand, waited for the whale to rise....

The line came in.... The nerves of each man tautened.... Mr. Ham said, over his shoulder: "Silva, you coil t'line. Rest of you get in your oars. Hold ready...."

He heard the men obey, knew they were ready to maneuver at his command.... The whale was coming up slowly; the line was still slack, but the creature should have breached long before....

The mate thought he detected a light pull on the line; it seemed to draw backward, underneath the boat; and he said softly:

"Pull her around."

The oars dipped; the boat swung slowly on a pivot.... The line now ran straight down....

Abruptly, Mr. Ham, bending above the water, thought he saw a black bulk far down and down.... A bulk that seemed to rise.... He watched....

It was ahead of the boat; it became more plainly visible.... He waved his hand, pointing: "There ..." he said. "There...."

Deep in the water, that black bulk swiftly moved; it darted to one side, circling, rising.... Mr. Ham saw a flash of white, a huge black head, a sword-like, saw-toothed jaw.... The big man towered; he flung his left hand up and back in a tremendous gesture.

"Starn.... Oh, starn all!" he cried.

The oars bent like bows under the fierce thrust of the men as they backed water.... The boat slid back.... But not in time....

Willis Cox, and the men in his boat, saw the long, narrow under jaw of the cachalot—a dozen feet long, with the curving teeth of a tiger set along it—slide up from the water, above the bow of the boat. The bow lifted as the whale's upper jaw, toothless, rose under it.... The creature was on its back, biting.... The boat rolled sidewise, the men were tumbling out....

But that narrow jaw sheared down resistlessly. Through the stout sides of the boat, crumpling and splintering ribs and planking.... Through the boat.... And clamped shut as the jaws closed across the thick body of the mate.... They saw the mate's body swell as a toy balloon swells under a child's foot.... Then horribly it relaxed and fell away and was lost in a smother of bloody foam....

Loum, Willis's boat-steerer, swung them alongside the rolling whale. It was Brander who caught a loop of the loose line; and while the creature lay quietly, apparently content with what it had done, they hauled close, and Willis—the boy's face was white, but his hand was steady—drove home his lance, and drew it forth, and plunged it in, again and yet again....

The whale seemed to have exhausted its strength. Having killed, it died easily enough. Spout crimsoned, flukes beat in a last flurry, then the great black bulk was still....

They picked up the men who had been spilled from the mate's boat. Not a man hurt, of them all, save only Mr. Ham.

Him they never found; no part of him. The sea took him. No doubt, Faith thought that night, he would have wished his rough life thus to end.

XII

Mr. Ham was dead and gone. Faith was surprised to find, in the next few days, how much she missed him. The mate had been harsh, brutal to the men, ready with his fist.... Yet somehow she found in her heart a deep affection for the man. He was so amiably stupid, so stupidly good of heart. His philosophy of life had been the philosophy of blows; he believed men, like children, were best ruled for their own good by the heavy hand of a master. And he acted on that belief, with the best will in the world. But there had never been any malice in his blows; he frowned and glared and struck from principle; he was at heart a simple man, and a gentle one.... Not the stuff of a leader; never the man to take command of a masterless ship. Nevertheless, a man of a certain rude and simple strength of soul....

Faith was sorry he was gone; she felt they could have better spared another man.... Almost any other, save Noll Wing.

She did not at once perceive the true nature of the change which Mr. Ham's death must bring about aboard the Sally. In the balancing of man and man which had made for a precarious stability there, Mr. Ham had taken a passive, but nevertheless important part. Now he was gone; the balance was disturbed. But neither Faith nor the others at once perceived this; none of them saw that Dan'l Tobey as second mate, and Dan'l Tobey as first mate, with only a step between him and the command, were very different matters.... Not even Dan'l, in the beginning....

They were all too busy, for one thing; there were the whales to be cut in—for James Tichel had killed and towed his booty back to the Sally an hour after Mr. Ham died. Tichel's whale, and the one that had killed Mr. Ham, would give the whole ship work for days; feverish work, hard and engrossing. Cap'n Wing, who had leaned upon Mr. Ham in the past, perforce took charge of this work, and the strain of it wearied him. He no longer had the abounding vitality which it demanded.... It wearied him; and what with the death of the mate, and the rush of this work and his own weariness, he altogether forgot his threat to have the man, Brander, whipped in the rigging. He forgot Brander, tried to drive the men at their tasks, and eventually gave up in a stormy outbreak of impatience and left the matter in the hands of Dan'l Tobey.

Dan'l went about the business of cutting in and boiling the blubber in a deep abstraction; he was considering the problem raised by the death of Mr. Ham, which none of the others—save, perhaps, Faith—had yet perceived.

This problem was simple; yet it had possibilities of trouble. Mr. Ham was gone; Dan'l automatically became first officer; old James Tichel ranked as second, Willis as third.... But the place of fourth mate was left empty.... It would have to be filled. The Sally could not go on about her business with one boat's crew forever idle. There would have to be a new officer.

Dan'l was troubled by the problem, for the obvious reason that Brander was the only man aboard with an officer's training; that Brander was the obvious choice. Dan'l did not want Brander in the cabin; he had seen too much in Faith's eyes that night when she heard Brander sing by the capstan.... He had eyes to see, and he had seen. And there was boiling in Dan'l a storm of hatred for Brander. He was filled with a rancor unspeakable....

No one spoke of this necessity for choosing another officer until the last bit of blubber from the two whales had been boiled; the last drop of oil stowed in the casks; the last fleck of soot scoured from the decks. Then it was old Tichel who opened the matter. It was at dinner in the cabin that he spoke. Cap'n Wing was there, and Faith, and Dan'l, and Roy. Willis Cox was on deck; Mr. Ham's chair was vacant. Old Tichel looked at it, and he looked at Noll Wing, and he said:

"Who's to set there, cap'n?" He pointed toward the empty chair as he spoke. It was at Cap'n Wing's right hand, where Mr. Ham had been accustomed to sit. Dan'l Tobey had not yet preëmpted it. Dan'l was always a discreet man.

Cap'n Wing looked across at Tichel. "Mr. Tobey, o' course," he said.

Tichel nodded. "Natural. I mean—who's goin' to be the new officer? Or don't you figure to hev one?"

Noll had been drinking that day; he was befuddled; his brain was thick. He waved one of his big hands from side to side as though to brush Tichel away. "Leave it to me," he said harshly. "I don't call for any pointers, Mr. Tichel. Leave it to me...."

James Tichel nodded again; he got up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and went on deck.... Dan'l and Roy, Faith and Noll Wing, were left together. Dan'l wondered whether it was time for him to speak; he studied Noll's lowered countenance, decided to hold his tongue.... He followed Tichel to the deck.

Noll said nothing of the matter all that day. At night, when they were going to bed, Faith asked him: "Who have you decided to promote to be an officer, Noll?"

He said harshly: "You heard what I told Tichel? Leave it to me."

"Of course," she agreed. "I just wanted to know. Of course...." She hesitated, seemed about to speak, then held her peace. Brander was the only man aboard who had the training; Noll must see that, give him time.

Faith wanted to see Brander in the cabin. She admitted this to herself, quite frankly; she did not even ask whether there was anything shameful in this desire of hers. She knew there was not.... The girl had come to have an almost reverential regard for the welfare of the Sally; for the prosperity of the cruise. It was her husband's charge; the responsibility lay on him. She wanted matters to go well; she wanted Noll to keep unstained his ancient record.... Brander, she knew, would help him. Brander was a man, an able officer, skillful and courageous; a good man to have at one's back in any battle.... She was beginning to see that Noll would need a friend before this cruise was done; she wanted Brander on Noll's side.

It may be that there was mingled with this desire a wish that Brander might have the place that was due him; but there was nothing in her thoughts of the man that Noll might not have known.

She watched Noll, next day; and more than once she caught him watching where Brander aided with some routine task, or talked with the men. There was trouble in Noll's eyes; and because she had come to understand her husband very fully, Faith could guess this trouble. Noll was torn between respect for Brander, and fear of him....

Brander, that day of Mr. Ham's death, had faced Noll unafraid; Noll knew he was no coward. But by the same token, he had sworn to have Brander whipped, and had not done so. He recognized the strength and courage in the man; and at the same time he hated Brander as we hate those we have wronged. Brander was not afraid of Noll; and for that reason, if for no other, Noll was afraid of Brander. In the old days, when he walked in his strength, Noll Wing had feared no man, had asked no man's fear. His own fist had sufficed him. But now, when his heart was growing old in his breast, he was the lone wolf.... He must inspire fear, or be himself afraid.... He was afraid of Brander.

Afraid of Brander.... But Noll was no fool. No man who is a fool can long master other men as Noll had mastered them. He set himself to consider the matter of Brander, and decide what was to be done.

That night, when dark had fallen, and the Sally Sims was idling on a slowly stirring sea, Noll called the mates into the cabin. Faith and Roy were on deck together; and Roy, with a boy's curiosity, stole to the top of the cabin companion to listen to what passed. Faith paid him little attention; she was astern, watching the phosphorescent sparks that glowed and vanished in the disturbed water on the Sally's wake. The whaler was scarce moving at all; there was no foam on the water behind her; but the little swirls and eddies were outlined in fire....

Noll looked around the table at the other mates; and he said heavily:

"We've got to have a new officer."

They knew that as well as he; the statement called for no reply. Only Dan'l Tobey said: "Yes, sir.... And a man we know, and can count on."

Noll raised his big head and looked at Dan'l bleakly. "Mr. Tobey," he said, "you know the men. Who is there that measures up to our wants, d'you think?"

Dan'l started to speak; then he hesitated, changed his mind.... Said at last: "I'm senior officer here, sir. But—I've not the experience that Mr. Tichel has, for instance. Perhaps he has some one in mind."

Noll nodded. "All right, Mr. Tichel. If you have, say out."

James Tichel grinned faintly. "I have. But you'll not mind me, so no matter."

"Out with it, any fashion," Noll insisted.

"Silva, then," said Tichel. "Silva!" He looked from one of them to another. Noll's face was set in opposition; Dan'l's was neutral; Willis Cox was obviously amazed. "Silva," said old Tichel, for the third time. "He's a Portugee.... All right. But he's a good man; he knows the boat; he's worked with Mr. Ham. And he can take the boat and make a harpooner out of one or the other of two men in her...." He stopped, unused to such an outbreak. "That's my say, leastwise," he finished.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Noll looked toward Dan'l again. "Now, Mr. Tobey," he said.

Dan'l leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "I've nothing against Silva," he said quietly. "He's a good man. The best man in the crew, I'm thinking.... But....

"The man I have in mind is Roy Kilcup. No less."

Noll's eyes widened; and old Tichel snapped: "He's never been in a boat."

"I know the boy," Dan'l insisted. "I'll undertake to teach him all he needs know in a week. He knows boats; he has guts and heart.... All he needs to know is whales...."

"Aye," said Willis Cox scornfully. "Aye, that's all. But who does know them?"

Dan'l smiled. "You might well enough ask, Mr. Cox."

Willis flushed painfully. "He's just a kid," he protested.

"You were almost three months older when you struck your first whale, if I mind right," said Dan'l pleasantly.

Big Noll Wing interrupted harshly: "That's enough. Silva and Roy. Who would you have, Mr. Cox?"

"Only one man aboard," said Willis.

"That's who.... I've no mind for conundrums."

"Brander," said Cox. "Brander!"

Noll seemed to slump a little in his chair; he smiled wearily. Dan'l Tobey thought the captain had never looked so old. His big fist on the table moved a little from side to side, then was still. In the silence, they all heard the voice of Roy Kilcup, from the deck above, crying to Faith in a trembling whisper:

"Dan'l wants to make me mate, Sis! He wants to make me mate...."

His voice was so tremulous, so obviously the voice of a boy, that every man of them save Dan'l Tobey smiled. Noll said slowly: "He's over youthful yet, Dan'l. Teach him the trade.... Happen, some day, we'll see...."

Dan'l was betrayed by anger into indiscretion. "Over youthful, that may be," he exclaimed. "But not a Portugee; and not a beach comber...."

Noll held up his big hand, silencing Dan'l. And he looked from man to man; and he said slowly, as an old man speaks: "I've no liking for Brander. He dared me to my face, t'other day. But there's this....

"He holds the crew. They like him. And he's a man; and he knows the job; and he does not know how to be afraid. Also, he has a right to the place. If we don't give it to him, he might well enough make a bit trouble for us. Leastwise, that's the seeming of it to me...."

Dan'l said harshly: "I never heard that Noll Wing feared any man."

Noll smiled. "Age brings wisdom, Dan'l. I'm learning to fear.... So...."

Dan'l Tobey found Brander on the fore deck, ten minutes later. Brander was smoking, with two of the men. Dan'l touched his shoulder; Brander stepped aside. The two men faced each other in the darkness for a moment; and it was as though an electric spark of hostility passed between them. Their eyes clashed....

Then Dan'l said pleasantly: "Get your traps and come aft to the cabin, Brander."

Brander chuckled softly; he tapped out his pipe in his palm and tossed the glowing ember over the rail. "Thank you, Mr. Tobey," he said. "I'm pleased to accept your kind invitation."

There was a mocking light in his eye that Dan'l, even in the dark, could see. Another man might have struck; but Dan'l was never one for blows. He turned on his heel and went aft; and Brander dropped into the fo'c's'le to collect his belongings.

XIII

Thus Brander came into the cabin. He and Willis Cox shared a small compartment off the main cabin; while Dan'l and tigerish old Tichel shared another. The four mates, Roy, Noll Wing, and Faith all lived in a space not much more than twenty-five feet square. This intimacy that could not be escaped served to intensify the clash of man and man. Brander and Dan'l Tobey became, within the week, open and avowed enemies.

They made no great show of their enmity, but each understood. Dan'l, by virtue of his position as mate, gradually gathered into his own hands the authority that old Noll Wing was letting slip; he assumed many of the small prerogatives of the captain; and he took advantage of his strength to give Brander irksome tasks, to make his work unnecessarily hard. Noll saw nothing. He had fallen into something like a stupor; he was rotting at the heart, like a great log that lies prone in the forest. He played with his authority; he had days when he liked to fancy that he was the Noll of old; but most of the time he spent in the cabin below, sleeping, or perhaps drinking, or reading the Bible and maundering over his own past sins. A wholesome interest in the Bible is a good thing for any man; but Noll's interest was not wholesome. He was morbidly absorbed in the Book; he read it and mourned to think how wicked he had been. He complained to Faith as though she were to blame for his ancient crimes.

It came to pass that he flooded Faith, little by little, with the details of his own misdemeanors. His own orgy of self-depreciation led him to decide that he was not worthy of her; he told her so; and when Faith sought to hearten him, the man—to prove his point—recited the tale of the hot blood of his youth. He told her the women he had known, so that Faith was sickened; and he begged her to forgive him, and she did. She forgave without rancor.... It was characteristic of Faith that she held no anger against Noll because he was not what she thought him. She had married him, eyes open.... He was her husband; she was his. She set herself to serve him, to protect him against himself, with all the loyalty that was in her. And more than all, she set herself to uphold Noll as the master of his ship. He must bring the Sally home with bursting casks; that was Faith's creed and prayer. He must fight the good fight; he must meet his responsibility; he must be master....

She worked to this end unceasingly; and on the whole her efforts were without avail. Noll steadily degenerated.... His strength fled from him.

Faith was so concerned with Noll that she gave little heed to the hostility between Dan'l Tobey and Brander. These two fought their fight without her interference. And this struggle between them was a curious thing. On Dan'l's side, it was a constant and persistent effort to harass Brander and discredit him; on Brander's side, it was a good-natured opposition to this effort. When Dan'l gave Brander two men's work to do, Brander smiled—and did it. When Dan'l blamed Brander for what was another's fault, or no fault of any man, Brander silently and cheerfully took the blame. Now and then he looked at Dan'l with a blue flash of anger in his eyes; but for the most part he was good-humored; he seemed amused by Dan'l, nothing more.

Dan'l chose, one day, to take Brander to task at dinner in the cabin. Noll and Faith were there, and the four mates. Brander, as was his duty, came down last; he sat at the foot of the board. The Sally was cruising idly, watching for a spout. Brander and Willis Cox had been on deck before dinner. There was little for either of them to do, save watch for any chance of harm, or wait for word of a whale.

When Brander came down, he caught Faith's eye from the foot of the companion ladder, and Faith nodded and said: "Good morning." Brander smiled. Dan'l looked at Faith; and he looked at Brander; and he gripped his chair to hold back a hot word that would have ruined him. Brander sat down at the foot of the table. Noll seemed scarce to know he had come, and Faith nodded to Brander to pass his plate. Brander did so, and Faith served him. The plate went back to Brander.

Dan'l said slowly: "Mr. Brander, the main hatch was not fast when I came down. Did you secure it?"

Brander looked up quickly, smiled. "No, sir," he said. "I...."

"Why not?" Dan'l demanded acidly. "Are you waiting for a squall to tear it off?"

Willis Cox said: "I had it made fast, sir. Before Mr. Brander came on deck."

Dan'l crimsoned in spite of himself; old Tichel grinned unpleasantly. Brander smiled; and Faith looked at Dan'l and waited for his word of acknowledgment. Dan'l saw her eyes.... He said to Brander: "Then, of course, you couldn't make it fast. Why didn't you say so—since it was done before you came on deck?"

Brander said soberly: "Sorry, sir." But his eyes were twinkling. What use to explain; Dan'l could not be in a worse light. And Dan'l knew it. He said hotly:

"What is so funny?..."

Noll Wing rumbled from the head of the table, where he had seemed concerned only with his food: "Let be. Let be. The thing is done. That's all that's needful, Mr. Tobey."

And Dan'l got hold of himself; he said respectfully: "Right, sir."

The matter dropped there.... A small thing; but an incident very typical of the tension which was growing in the cabin of the Sally Sims. Dan'l, jaundiced by his own hatred of Brander, by his disordered passion for Faith, was not good company. Save Roy, all those in the cabin avoided him. Roy was fiercely loyal to Dan'l; and he hated Brander the more because Brander had been given the mate's berth to which Roy himself had foolishly aspired. That was Dan'l's doing, that aspiration; he had taken care to tell Roy that he had proposed Roy's name. "Brander does not belong in the cabin," he told Roy. "He is rag tag and bob tail, from God knows where. If I'd been Noll Wing, you would be fourth mate to-day...."

He fed Roy's sense of wrong; for the boy might some day prove a useful tool. Dan'l was full of venom in those days; but he had not yet formed his ultimate plan.

He still loved Faith, with some faint traces of the old decency. He knew in his heart that she would never love him; yet he would never be content till he got this from her own lips. The inevitable happened one evening when a new moon's thin crescent faintly lighted the dark seas. Noll had gone early to a sodden sleep; Faith was not sleepy and went on deck. Dan'l, from his cabin, heard her go; he arose and followed her....

There was little wind; the sea was flat; the Sally scarcely stirred. Dan'l told the man at the wheel to leave her and go forward; he made the wheel fast and let the Sally go her own gait. Her canvas was all stowed; her yards were bare. When the man was gone, Dan'l turned to the after rail, where Faith was sitting. The man's mouth was hot and dry, and his pulse was pounding. He came to her; Faith said softly:

"Hello, Dan'l...."

Dan'l mumbled huskily.... "... Faith!" He stood beside her, and they looked out across the water, where the starlight played. Dan'l was trembling, and Faith felt the trouble in the man, as she had felt it for weeks.... She and Dan'l had been boy and girl together; she was infinitely sorry for him....

In the end, while he stood rigidly beside her, she laid her hand on his arm. "Dan'l," she said, "I wish—you would get over being so unhappy."

He looked at her through the dark; his voice was like a croak. "Unhappy ..." he repeated.

"It's not good for you, Dan'l," said Faith gently. "Unhappiness is—it's like a poison. It burns...."

"Aye?" said Dan'l. "That's true, Faith. It burns...."

"Why not forget it?" she urged. "You're actually growing thin on it, Dan'l. Your face is lined...."

Dan'l tried to laugh. "One thing," he said, "the ship's on my hands, now. Noll Wing—he's aging. He's an old man, Faith."

Faith turned her head away from him quickly; she bit her lip in the darkness. Dan'l repeated: "The Sally's on my hands, Faith. I'm master—without the name of it."

She said quietly: "Noll Wing is master here, Dan'l. Never think he is not."

Dan'l turned abruptly away; he stood with his back to her. And as he stood there, the jealousy of Brander and all the rancor that was poisoning the man gave way for a moment to his tenderness for Faith. He swung back sharply, gripped her shoulders.... "Faith," he said harshly, "Noll is master. So be it. But, Faith—I may still love you. I do. Nothing on earth can stop it. It's all there is in me, Faith. You.... You.... I would worship you; he kicks you with every word, as he kicks a dog. Faith.... Faith...."

She faced him squarely. "Dan'l, you are wrong. You are wrong to tell me this—to speak so.... It is not—manly, Dan'l."

The reproach in her voice made him shrink; it fired him. He caught her, cried: "By God...." He would have swept her into his arms....

Brander said, from the top of the companion: "Mr. Tobey, shall I set a man at the wheel?... There's wind coming...."

Dan'l cursed. "Hell!" He flung loose from Faith, he whirled on Brander.... The two men faced each other tensely, Dan'l crouching with bared teeth, Brander erect.... The starlight showed a little smile on his face. Abruptly, Dan'l straightened....

"Set a man at the wheel—and be damned, Brander!" he said.

And he brushed past the fourth mate without a glance, and went below. Brander called through the darkness to a knot of men on the deck, forward. One came aft....

Faith still stood by the rail; Brander paid her no heed. The man took the wheel.... Brander leaned against the forward end of the deckhouse. After a little, Faith stirred, came to the companion to go below. At its top, she paused.

"Good night, Mr. Brander," she said.

"Good night," he called pleasantly.

She went below. Dan'l, writhing in his bunk below old Tichel, who snored above him, heard her cross the cabin and go into Noll's. And the nails on his fingers bit his palms.

The second day after, Dan'l came down into the cabin to find Noll. "Would you mind coming on deck for a moment, sir?" he asked.

Noll was reading; he looked up resentfully. "What now, Mr. Tobey? Can't you handle the ship?"

"I want you to see a thing...." There was a hint of evil in Dan'l's tone. Faith was there, heard, wondered.... Noll looked at the mate; bestirred himself....

They went on deck together; and Dan'l pointed forward.

Brander was there, by the tryworks. Facing him, grouped about him, were four of the crew. Mauger was among them. Brander was talking; and the men were laughing at what he said. One of the men looked aft and saw Dan'l and Noll Wing watching them; and the man's face sobered instantly and he backed away from the group. Brander turned around and saw the captain. Noll called to him:

"Come aft, Mr. Brander."

Brander came, without haste, yet quickly. Noll and Dan'l waited for him in silence; they kept silent when he faced them. He met Noll Wing's sullen and angry eyes. His own were unashamed and unafraid. "What is it, sir?" he asked at last.

Noll lowered his big head like a bull. "What was your talk with the men, there?" he demanded.

Brander smiled. "The man Hatch tripped on a coil of line and fell. That minded me of a thing that happened on the Thomas Morgan, and I told them of it. A fat greeny caught his foot in the rigging and dove thirty feet overside into the sea.... It was a comical thing, sir. And they laughed at it."

"I do not want my mates consorting with the crew," said Noll sulkily; and there was more complaint than accusation in his voice. Brander said:

"It does no harm to be friendly with the men. Liking is as good a handle as fear, to hold them with."

Old Noll tried to beat down Brander's eyes with his own; but his own were the first to shift. He shrank, the vigor of his anger passed, he was an old man again. "Damn it, if you'd rather be forward, go there and stay," he fretted. "Do you want to go back to the fo'c's'le, man?"

Brander said respectfully: "No, sir. I'll do as you say."

"For God's sake, do," Noll whined. He turned back to the cabin, brushed Dan'l. "And you, Mr. Tobey. Don't bother me with such matters."

Dan'l looked at Brander, eyes glinting. "I thought it important, sir," he said.

Noll grunted and went below. Dan'l, with a triumphant grin at Brander, followed him. Faith was in the main cabin; she looked at the two seriously. "What was it, Noll?" she asked.

Noll shook his head fretfully; he stumped past her toward his own cabin. "The man Brander, currying favor forward," he said. "I put a bee in his bonnet."

Dan'l said: "He meant no harm, sir. I'm sure of it...."

Noll whirled on him. "Then why did you run to me?"

"So that you might set him right, and put an end to't," said Dan'l. "He's a bit too friendly with the men.... It was time he was told...."

"Oh, aye," said Noll wearily. "Come, Faith...."

The door of the after cabin shut behind them; and Dan'l, left alone, smiled at his own thoughts and was content.

XIV

There was one circumstance that counted against Brander in the eyes of James Tichel, of Mr. Cox, and of some of the crew. This was the fact that for close on a month after he was made an officer, the Sally Sims sighted not one loose whale.

There were fish all about them. During the interval, they sighted three other whaling craft, and stopped to gam with them. Two of the three were cutting in when the Sally sighted them; the third had just finished trying out the blubber of a ninety barrel bull. But the Sally sighted not so much as a spout. And old Tichel, who had the superstitions of the sea in his blood, began to look sidewise at Brander, and whisper that he was a Jonah....

That new moon in whose light Dan'l tried to plead with Faith was another ill omen. Noll Wing, coming on deck the first night the moon appeared, saw it first over his left shoulder when Faith called to him to look. He swung his head to the left.... Saw the moon.... And old Tichel's cry was too late to stop him. Faith laughed at the second mate; Noll grumbled at him. But Tichel clung to his doubts; and Willis Cox was converted to them by the indisputable fact that the Sally sighted no whales.

The men on a whaling vessel have an interest in the cruise. They are not paid for the work they do, for the time they spend.... They are paid according to the earnings of the vessel. Their salary, or wage, is called a "lay." This ranges from the captain's lay down to that of the greeny. The captain's is a twelfth; or at least this was Noll Wing's lay. The greenies on the Sally Sims were on a hundred and seventy-fifth lay. Which, being interpreted, means that out of every twelve barrels of oil which the Sally brought home, one belonged to the captain; and out of every hundred and seventy-five, one belonged to each of the green hands. The captain got one in twelve, the mate one in eighteen; the second mate got one in twenty-eight, and so the shares ran down the scale. The lays were so arranged that out of every hundred and seventy-five barrels, some fifty-five went to the officers and crew, while the remainder went to the owner to pay the expenses of the voyage and give him his profits.... Three per cent., or six, or a hundred, as the luck of the cruise might decide.... The crew were sure of their money, such as it was, before the owner got his; for it was the custom of old Jonathan Felt to pay off his men at the current price of oil before figuring his own profit or loss.

The effect of this arrangement was to give the mates and the men an incentive to harder effort. The effect was to make them acutely interested in the success of the cruise. And by the same token, the ill luck which now beset the Sally tended to fret their tempers and set them growling about their tasks....

Some blamed Brander; some blamed Noll Wing; some blamed their luck....

Brander felt the strain as much as any of them. He was, in addition, an untried man; he had not yet had his chance to strike a whale, and that is the final test of a whaler's officers. When he was taken into the cabin and given a boat, he was forced to be content with the poorest material aboard. That is the fourth mate's luck. He had Mauger, the one-eyed man; he had Loum as his harpooner; and he had to fill out his crew three others who were weak hands at the oars and slack at every task.

He set himself to whipping this crew into shape; and in the luckless days when the Sally idled with double watches at the mastheads, he used to take his boat off and push the men to their work, training steadily, fighting to put pith into them. He was not a man given to the use of his fists; neither had his tongue the acid bite of Dan'l Tobey's. But he had a way of railing at the men good-naturedly, abusing them with a smile, that made them laugh and tug the harder at their oars; he won from them more than they had ever given before.... And he inspired in them a distinct loyalty which gave birth, in time, to a pride in their boat which pleased Brander, and promised well.

Mauger, in particular, was Brander's shadow and slave. The one-eyed man, who had been turned into a chuckling and harmless nonentity by the captain's blow and kick, found Brander kindly. And he repaid this kindliness with a devotion that was marked by every man aboard.... This devotion was marked, above all, by Noll Wing. And Noll, in whom fear of the one-eyed man was growing like a cancer, dreaded Brander all the more because of it.

Noll and Faith were playing cribbage in the after cabin one night; and the door into the main cabin was open. Faith sat on the seat across the stern, and Noll was in a chair, his back to the door, his knees supporting the board they used as a table. Brander came down from the deck with word that one of the men had cut himself with his clasp knife; he wanted to go to the medicine chest in the after cabin for materials to care for the wound. The sea was turbulent; the Sally was rocking on it; the rigging was creaking and the timbers of the old craft groaned aloud. This tumult drowned the noise of Brander's footsteps as he came down the ladder and across the main cabin. When he appeared in the doorway behind Noll, Faith saw him. Noll neither saw nor heard till Brander said quietly:

"Sorry to bother you, sir...."

Noll, whose nerves were shaky, whirled up from his chair; the board slid from his knees, the cards were spilled.... His face was ghastly with fright; and when he saw Brander, this fright turned to rage.

"Damn you, Brander," he cried. "Don't you sneak up on me like that again...."

Brander said respectfully: "I'm sorry. I should have...."

"What do you want?" Noll barked. "Get out of here. Get out of my sight. Don't stand there gawping...."

"I want to get some...."

"I don't give a damn what you want," Noll cried. "Get up on deck, where you belong. Sharp...."

Brander stood his ground. "One of my men has cut his hand," he said. "I want some stuff to fix it up."

Noll wavered.... He threw up his hands. "All right. Get what you want.... I can't get rid of you any other way. But don't come sneaking up behind me again. I don't like it, Mr. Brander."

Brander made no reply; he crossed to the medicine chest and found what he needed. Faith had picked up the fallen board, the cards.... She said quietly: "Sit down, Noll. We'll deal that hand over again...."

Big Noll sat down, watching Brander sidewise. When Brander was gone, Faith asked: "Why were you startled?"

"I don't like that man," Noll said. "He's too thick with Mauger for me. Mauger'll stick a knife in me, some night.... He will, Faith."

Faith shook her head. "Don't be foolish, Noll. Mauger's not worth being afraid of."

Noll laughed mirthlessly. "I tell you, there's murder in that man," he protested. "And Brander's with him.... I've a mind...."

"It's your crib," said Faith, and played a card. "Three."

Noll mechanically took up the game; but Faith, watching, saw that his eyes were furtively alert for half an hour thereafter.

On the twenty-fifth day after the death of Mr. Ham, at about ten o'clock on a warm and lazy morning, the man at the foremast head gave tongue to the long hail of the whale-fisheries....

"Blo-o-o-o-w! Ah-h-h-h-h blo-o-o-o-o-o-w!"

The droning cry swept down through the singing rigging, swept the decks of the Sally, penetrated into the fo'c's'le, dropped into the cabin and brought Dan'l Tobey and Noll Wing from sleep there to the deck. Faith was already there, sewing in her rocking chair aft by the wheel. When Dan'l reached the deck, he saw her standing with her sewing gathered in her hands, the gold thimble gleaming on her middle finger, watching Brander. Brander was half way up the main rigging, glass leveled to the southward.

Noll Wing bellowed to the masthead man: "Where away?..." And the man swept a hand to point. Noll climbed up toward Brander, shouting to Mr. Tobey to bring the Sally around toward where the whale had been sighted. The men from the mastheads and the fo'c's'le and all about the deck jumped to their places at the boats to wait the command to lower. Brander took the glass from his eye as Noll's weight pulled at the rigging below him, and looked down at the captain, and started to speak; then he changed his mind and waited, glass in hand, while Noll scrutinized the far horizon....

Noll saw a black speck there, and focused his glass, and stared.... He watched for a spout, watched for minutes on end. None came.... The black speck seemed to rise a little, sluggishly, with the swell.... He looked up to Brander.

"D'you make a spout?" he asked.

Brander shook his head. "No, sir."

Noll looked again, and Brander leveled his glass once more. The Sally was making that way, now; the speck was almost dead ahead of them, far on the sea. Tiny bits of white were stirring over the black thing, like bits of paper in the wind.... Noll asked at last: "What do you make of it, Mr. Brander? A boat.... Or a derelict...."

"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...."

Dan'l Tobey said, with a grin: "A man'd think you like the smell of it, Brander."

"Ambergris is fool's talk," Noll growled. "I've heard tell of it for thirty year, and never saw a lump bigger than a man's thumb. Fool's talk, Mr. Brander. Let be...."

He turned away; and Brander and Dan'l stood together, watching as the Sally drifted nearer and nearer the dead whale. They could see the feasting sea birds hovering; they caught once or twice the flash of a leaping body as sharks tore at the carcass. Here and there the blubber showed white where great chunks had been ripped away. They watched, and drifted nearer; and so there came to them presently the smell of it. An unspeakable smell....

The men caught it first, in the bow; Dan'l and Brander heard their first cries of disgust before the slowly drifting air brought them the odor. But five minutes later, it had engulfed the ship, penetrated even into the cabin. Noll got it; he stuck his head up out of the companion and bellowed:

"Mr. Tobey, get the Sally out o' range of that."

Dan'l said: "Not a breath of wind, sir." He went toward the companion, as Noll stepped out on deck; and he grinned with malicious inspiration, "Mr. Brander likes the smell of it, sir.... Why not send him off to tow it out of range?"

Noll nodded fretfully. "All right, all right. Send him...."

Dan'l gave the order. Brander assented briskly. "I'll take a boarding knife with me, if you don't object, sir," he said.

Dan'l chuckled. He was enjoying himself. "I'd suggest a clothespin, Mr. Brander," he said; and he stood aft and watched Brander and his men drop their boat and put away and row toward the lean carcass of the dead whale, a quarter mile away. The jeers of the seamen forward pursued them.

Dan'l got his glass to enjoy watching Brander and his crew tow the whale out of the Sally's neighborhood. The men worked hard; and Dan'l said to Cap'n Wing: "They're in haste to be through, you'll see, sir." Once the tow was under way, it moved swiftly. Men on the Sally breathed again....

They saw, after a time, that Brander and his men had stopped rowing and brought their boat alongside the whale; and Dan'l's glass revealed Brander digging and hacking at the carcass with the boarding knife....

Brander came back alongside in due time; and long before he reached the Sally, Dan'l could see the exultation in the fourth mate's eyes. As they slid past the bow, Brander's men taunted those who had jeered at them. They were like men who have turned the tables on their enemies....

Dan'l was uneasy.... The boat slid into position, the men hooked on the tackles, then climbed aboard.... They swung on the falls, the boat rose into its cradle.... And Brander turned to Dan'l and said pleasantly:

"It was worth the smell, Mr. Tobey."

He pointed into the boat; and Dan'l looked and saw three huge chunks of black and waxy stuff—black, with yellowish tints showing through—and he smelled a faint and musky fragrance. And he looked at Brander. "What is it?" he asked. "What do you think you've found?"

"Ambergris," said Brander. "Three big chunks, four little ones. Close to three hundred pounds...."

One-eyed Mauger chuckled at Brander's back. "And worth three hundred a pound," he cackled. "Worth the smell, Mr. Tobey!"

XV

Brander's find, laid tenderly upon the deck, studied by Noll Wing and the officers on their knees, set the Sally buzzing with the clack of tongues.

There was a romance in the stuff itself that caught attention. It came from the rotting carcass of the greatest thing that lives; it came from the heart of a vast stench.... Yet itself smelled faintly and fragrantly of musk, and had the power of multiplying any other perfume a thousand fold. Not a man on the Sally had ever seen a bit larger than a cartridge, before; they studied it, handled it, marveled at it.

Cap'n Wing stood up stiffly from bending over the stuff at last; he looked at Brander. "It's ugly enough," he said. "You're sure it's the stuff you think?"

Brander nodded. "Yes, sir, quite sure."

"What's it worth?" Cap'n Wing asked.

"Hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars a pound—price changes."

Noll looked at the waxy stuff again. "It don't look it," he said. "How much is there of it?"

"Close to three hundred pounds...."

Noll's lips moved with the computation. He said, in a voice that was hushed in spite of himself: "Close to ninety thousand dollars...."

Brander smiled. "That's the maximum, of course."

Dan'l Tobey said: "You've done the rest of us a service, Mr. Brander."

Brander looked at him; and an imp of mischief gleamed in his eye. He said quietly: "The rest of you. I was sent out to remove the carcass, not to dissect it. The digging for this was my private enterprise, Mr. Tobey."

Old James Tichel gasped under his breath. Dan'l started to speak, then looked to Noll. They all looked toward Cap'n Noll Wing.... It was for him to deal with Brander's claim.... They looked to Noll; and big Noll stared at the precious stuff on the deck, and at Brander.... And he said nothing.

Brander smiled. He called Mauger to come aft and help him, and he proceeded with the utmost care to clean the lumps of ambergris of the filth that clung to them. He paid no further heed to the men about him. Noll went below; and Faith, who had listened without speaking, followed him. Dan'l and old Tichel got together by the after rail and talked in whispers. Willis Cox stood, watching.... The young man's eyes were wide and his cheeks were white. These seven ugly lumps of something like hard, dirty yellow soap were worth more than the whole cruise of the Sally might be expected to pay.... They caught Willis's imagination; he could not take his eyes from them.

Brander had Mauger fetch whale oil; he washed the lumps in this as tenderly as a mother bathes a child. The black washed away, they became an even, dull yellow in his hands.... Here and there, bits of white stuff like bones showed in them.... Bits of the bones of the gigantic squid on which the cachalot feeds. Their faint, persistent odor spread around them....

When the cleaning was done, Mauger fetched steelyards and they weighed the lumps, slinging each with care.... The larger ones were so heavy that they had to make the scales fast to the rigging.... The largest weighed seventy-four pounds and a fraction; the next was sixty-one; the third, forty-eight. The four smaller lumps, weighed together, tipped the beam at nineteen pounds.... The seven totaled two hundred and two pounds....

Mauger was disappointed at that; he complained: "I took 'em to weigh three hundred, anyways...."

Brander looked at Willis. "Two hundred isn't to be laughed at! Eh, Mr. Cox?"

Willis said hoarsely: "That must be the biggest find of ambergris ever was."

Brander shook his head. "The Watchman, out o' Nantucket, brought back eight hundred pounds, in '58. I've heard so, anyways."

Willis had nothing to say to that; he went aft to join Tichel and Dan'l Tobey and tell them the weight of the stuff.... Brander sent for Eph Hitch, the cooper.... He showed him the ambergris....

"Fix me up a cask," he said. "Big enough to hold all that.... We'll stow it dry...."

Eph scratched his head. He spat over the rail. "Fix you up a cask?" he repeated. "Oh, aye." He emphasized the pronoun; and Brander's eyes twinkled.

They packed the ambergris away in the captain's storeroom; the compartment at the bottom of the Sally, under the cabin, in the very stern. It rested there among the barrels and casks of food and the general supplies.... There was no access to this place save through the cabin itself; it was not connected with the after hold where water and general stores and gear were stowed away. Brander suggested putting it there; he came to Noll Wing with his request, and because Dan'l Tobey was with Noll, Brander framed his question in a personal form.

"I'd like to stow this below us here," he said. "Best it be out of reach of the men."

Dan'l scowled; Noll looked up heavily, met Brander's eyes. In the end, he nodded. "Where you like," he said sulkily. "Don't bother me."

Brander smiled; and the cask was hidden away below....

But it was not forgotten; it could not be forgotten. From its hiding place, the ambergris made its influence felt all over the vessel. It was like dynamite in its potentialities for mischief. The mates could not forget it; the boat-steerers in the steerage discussed it over and over; the men forward in the fo'c's'le argued about it endlessly.

It was a rich treasure, worth as much as the whole cruise was like to be worth in oil; and it was all in one lump.... That is to say, it was no more than a heavy burden for a strong man. Two men could have carried it....

A thousand acres of well-tilled farm land are worth a great deal of money; but this form of riches is not one to catch the imagination. Wealth becomes more fascinating as it becomes more compact. Coal is more treasured than an equal value of earth; lead is more treasured than coal; and men will die for a nugget of gold that is worth no more than the unconsidered riches which lie all about them. Great value in small compass sets men by the ears....

Every man aboard the Sally had a direct and personal interest in Brander's find of ambergris. And the matter of their debate was this: was the ambergris the property of the Sally, a fruit of the voyage; or was it Brander's? If it was a part of the profits of the cruise, they would all share in it. If it was Brander's, they would not....

Brander—and this word had gone around the ship—had spoken of it as his own. For which some condemned and hated him; some praised and chose to flatter him. If the worth of the stuff was divided between them all, Noll Wing and Dan'l Tobey would have the lion's share, and the men forward would have no more than the price of a debauch. If it were Brander's alone, they might beg or steal a larger share from him. Or—and not a few had this thought—they might seize the whole treasure and make off with it....

The possibilities were infinite; the potentialities for trouble were enormous.

This new tension aboard the Sally came to a head in the cabin; the very air there was charged with it. Dan'l and old Tichel were against Brander from the first; Cox was inclined to support him. Dan'l sought to sound Noll Wing and learn his attitude....

He said to Noll casually, one day: "The 'gris will make this a fat cruise, sir."

Noll nodded. "Oh, aye.... No doubt!"

Dan'l looked away. "Of course, Brander doesn't intend to claim it all.... To push his claim...."

"Ye think not?" Noll asked anxiously.

"No," said Dan'l. "He knows he can't.... It's a part of the takings of the Sally...."

Noll wagged his head dolefully: "Aye, but will the man see it that way?"

"He'll have to."

The captain looked up at Dan'l cautiously. "Did you mark the greed in the one eye of Mauger when they came aboard?" he asked. "Mauger sets store by the stuff...."

Dan'l snorted. "Mauger! Pshaw!"

Noll shifted uneasily in his chair. "Just the same," he said, "Mauger holds a grudge against me.... He but waits his chance for a knife in my back.... And Brander is his friend, you'll mind."

"You're not afraid of the two of them.... There's no need. I'll undertake to see to that...."

"You're a strong man, Dan'l," said old Noll. "A strong, youthful man.... But I'm getting old. Eh, Dan'l...." His voice broke with his pity of himself. "Eh, Dan'l, I've sailed the sea too long...."

Dan'l said, with some scorn in his tone: "Nevertheless, you're not afraid...."

Then Faith opened the door from the after cabin; and Dan'l checked his word. Faith looked from Dan'l to her husband, and her eyes hardened as she looked to Dan'l again. "You'll not be saying Noll Wing is afraid of—anything, Dan'l," she said mildly.

"I'm telling him," said Dan'l, "that he should not permit Brander to claim the ambergris for himself."

Faith smiled a little. "You think Brander means to do that?"

"He has done it," said Dan'l stubbornly. "He claimed it in the beginning; he speaks of what he will do with it.... He speaks of it as his own."

"I think," said Faith, "that something has robbed you of discernment, Dan'l. Why do you hate Brander? Is he not a good officer?... A man?"

Dan'l might have spoken, but Brander himself dropped down the ladder from the deck just then; and Dan'l stood silently for a moment, watching....

Brander looked at Faith, and spoke to her, and to the others. Then he went into his own cabin and closed the door. They all knew the thinness of the cabin walls; what they might say, Brander could hear distinctly. Dan'l turned without a word, and went on deck.

He met Tichel there, and told him what had passed. Tichel grinned angrily.... "Aye," said the old man. "He comes and Jonahs us, so we sight no whale for a month on end.... And then is wishful to hold the prize that the Sally's boat found." His teeth set; his fist rose.... And Dan'l nodded his agreement.

"We'll see that he does not, in the end," he said.

"Aye," said Tichel. "Aye, we'll see t'that."

Roy Kilcup was a partisan of Dan'l's, in this as in all things; and Roy alone faced Brander on the matter. He asked the fourth mate straightforwardly: "Look here, do you claim that ambergris is yours?"

Brander smiled at the boy. "Why, youngster?" he asked.

"Because I want to know," said Roy. "That's why!"

"Well," Brander chuckled, "others want to know. They're not sleeping well of nights, for wanting...."

"Do you, or don't you?" Roy insisted.

Brander leaned toward him and whispered amiably: "I'll tell you, the day we touch at home," he promised. "Now—run along."

Thus they were all concerned; but Noll Wing took the matter harder than any, because Mauger, whom he feared, was concerned in it. His worry over it gave him one sleepless night; he rose in that night and found the whiskey.... And for the first time in all his life, Noll Wing drank himself into a stupor.

He had always been a steady drinker; he had often been inflamed with liquor. But his stomach was strong; he could carry it; he had never debauched himself.

This time, he became like a log, and Faith found him, when she woke in the morning, unclean with his own vomitings, sodden and helpless as a snoring log. He lay thus two days.... And he woke at last with a scream of fright, and swore that Mauger was at him with a knife, so that Dan'l and Willis Cox had to hold the man quiet till the hallucination passed.

XVI

Faith and Brander had not, in this time, spoken a word together since they met Mr. Ham upon the beach after Brander joined Faith by the island pool. In the beginning, Brander was forward, and a gulf separated them.... Not to mention forty feet of deck. Faith stayed aft; Brander stayed forward. Afterward, when Brander came into the cabin, there was still a gulf.... They met at table; they encountered each other, now and then, in the cabin or on deck. But Brander had his work to do, and did it; and Faith was much with Noll.

In the bush, by the pool, Faith had forgotten Noll Wing for a little space; and in the forgetting, she and Brander had become friends very quickly.... His question, as they reached the beach, made her remember Noll; and her answer to that question, when she told him she was Noll's wife, had reared a wall between them. Brander was a man; too much of a man to forget that she was Noll's wife.... He did not forget.

In the Sally, after Brander came aft, Faith was toward him as she was toward the other mates.... With this difference. She had known them since the beginning of the voyage; she had known two of them—Dan'l and Willis Cox—since they were boys. They were ticketed in her thoughts; they were old friends, but they could never be anything more. Therefore she talked often with them, as she did with Tichel, and as she had done with Mr. Ham. She forgot they were men, remembering only that they were friends....

Brander, on the other hand, was a newcomer, a stranger.... When a woman meets a strange man, or when a man meets a strange woman, there is an instant and usually unconscious testing and questioning. This is more lively in the woman than in the man; she is more apt to put it into words in her thoughts, more apt to ask herself: "Could I love him?" For a man does not ask this question at all until he has begun to love; a woman, consciously or unconsciously, asks it at once.... And until this question is answered; until the inner thing that is sex has made decision, a woman is reticent and slow to accept the communion of even casual conversation....

Faith, almost unconsciously, avoided Brander. She spoke with him; but there was a bar in her words. She saw him; but her eyes put a wall between them. She thought of him; but she hid her thoughts from herself. And Brander felt this, and respected it.... There was between them an unspoken conspiracy of silence; an unspoken agreement that held them apart....

This agreement was broken, and broken by Faith, on an afternoon some ten days after the finding of the ambergris. The day was fair; the wind was no more than normal.... No whales had yet been sighted by the Sally, and her decks were clear of oil. Mr. Tichel's watch had the ship; but Tichel himself, old man that he was, had stayed below and was asleep in his cabin. Dan'l was asleep there, also; and Noll Wing dozed in the after cabin. Willis Cox was reading, under the boathouse; and two of the harpooners played idly at some game of cards in the lee of the rail beside him. Brander and the man at the wheel had the after deck to themselves when Faith came up from the cabin....

Roy was with her; but the boy went forward at once and climbed the rigging to the masthead, to stand watch with the men there. He loved to perch high above the decks, with the sea spread out like a blue saucer below him. He teased Faith to go with him; but Faith shook her head. There was always a certain physical indolence about Faith that contrasted with the vigor of her habits of thought and speech; she liked to sit quietly and read, or sew, or think, and she cared nothing at all for such riotous exertion as Roy liked.

"No, Roy," she told her brother. "You go if you like. I'll stay down here."

"Come on, Sis," he teased. "I guess you're afraid.... You never could even climb a tree without squealing.... Come on."

She laughed softly. "No. I don't like to do hard things—like that."

"I won't let you fall," he promised.

"Some day, maybe.... Run along, Roy."

The boy went away resentfully; a little more resentfully because Brander had heard her refusal. He looked back from the fore rigging, and saw Faith standing near Brander.... And for a moment he was minded to go back and join them; but the dwindling line of the ropes above him lured him on. He climbed, lost himself among the great bosoms of the sails, stopped to ride a yard like a horse and exult when it pitched and rolled.... Climbed, at last, to the masthead perch where the lookouts stood in their hoops with their eyes sweeping the wide circle of the seas....

And Faith and Brander were together. Save for the man at the wheel, whom neither of them heeded, they were alone. Brander was at the after rail when she appeared; he nodded to her, and smiled. She stood near him, hands on the rail, looking out across the sea astern. The wind tugged at her, played with the soft hair about her brow, whipped her cheeks to fire....

She did not look at Brander, but Brander looked at her. The man liked what he saw; he liked not so much the beauty of her, as the strength and poise that lay in her face. Her broad, low brow.... Her straight, fine nose.... Her sweetly molded lips, and rounding chin.... Strength there, and calm, and power.... Beauty, too; more than one woman's measure of beauty, perhaps. But above all, strength. That was what Brander saw.

It was no new thing for the man to study Faith's countenance. It was firm-fastened in his thoughts; he could conjure it up at will, and it appeared before him, many times, without his volition. Faith's eyes were blue, and they were large, and Brander could never forget them. The eye of a man or of a woman is a thing almost alive; it seems to have a soul of its own. Stand at one side, unobserved, and watch the eyes of your friend; you will feel that you are watching some living personality apart from the friend you know. It is like watching a wild thing which is hiding in the forest. The eye is so alert, so infinitely alert, so quick to swing to right or left at any sound....

Women's eyes differ as much as women themselves. Faith's eyes were like Faith herself; there was no fear or uncertainty in them; and there was no coquettishness, no seduction. They were level and calm and perfectly assured; and Brander thought that to look into them was like taking a strong man's hand. He thought Faith as fine a thing as woman can be....

Brander made sure that Faith did not see him studying her thus; nevertheless, Faith must have felt his scrutiny. She was conscious of an unaccountable diffidence; and when she spoke to him at last, without looking toward him, her voice was so low he scarcely heard at all. She said some idle thing about the beauty of the sea....

Brander smiled. The sky was so clear, and the heavens were so blue that sky and heaven seemed to be cousins or sisters, hands clasping at the far horizon. He said amiably: "Always think—looking off into the blue on a day like this is like looking deep into blue eyes.... There seems to be a soul off there, something hidden, out of sight.... But you can feel it looking back at you."

Faith was so surprised that she looked up at him quickly, sidewise; and she smiled, her cheeks a little flushed. "I never felt—just that," she said. "But—did you ever look at a hill, so far away it is just a deep blue shape against the sky? Blue's a beautiful color to look at, I think."

He nodded. "From my hill," he said, "I used to be able to see an island northwest of the one where I was.... Barely see it. Just a line laid down along the sea.... A line of blue."

She said nothing in reply to this; and he said no more. They were thus silent for a little before Faith asked: "Tell me.... You've never had a chance.... How did you live, there? Wasn't it lonely? Or ... were there others?..."

He laughed. "I wasn't lonely, in the least," he explained. "The old devil-devil doctor of the village struck up an acquaintance with me.... He knew whites; and I was the only one there at the time. He used to come and talk to me, and say charms over my garden.... I had a little compass on my watch chain, and I gave it to him, and the old heathen was my slave for life. So I arranged with him to have my path taboo—you remember I told you.... And he was the only company I ever had."

"You had a—garden?"

"Yes. Good one. I put up a house, about six feet square—big enough for me, and no more—and I trimmed down some trees around there; and there was a little brook, and a shallow basin in the side of the hill where rich soil had been collecting for a good many centuries, I suppose. I think if I had planted pebbles there, it would have grown bowlders for me. It did grow all I wanted."

She was thoughtful for a little, looked at him once. "Why did you ever ship as a whaler?" she asked. "You don't look like the men that ship in the fo'c's'le."

He laughed. "I know it. Maybe because I like the sea. My home was in sight of it; a high old farm up in Maine, five miles inland. I used to sit out on the hill there and watch the night come up from the east and blanket the water; and when there was a surf I could hear it; and when I could, I went down and got acquainted with the water, swimming, or poking around in an old dory.... It was bound to get me in the end. My father sent me to school.... He wanted me to be a doctor. But after two years of it, I begged off.... And he let me go."

She nodded. "I know—a little—how you feel. I've always loved the smell of the sea at home, and the sight of it.... But...." She grimaced harshly. "I'm getting a bit tired of salt water, all the time.... I want to get ashore."

"Sure," Brander chuckled. "And when you've been a month ashore, you'll be hungry for the sea again. It's like a drug; you get used to it, and you can't do without it."

She looked at him. "Do you think so?"

"I know it. Wait and see."

After a little, she spoke of the ill luck that had pursued the Sally. "Isn't it unusual to go almost six weeks without getting a whale?"

"No, not necessarily," he told her. "You may kill every other day for a year, and not see a fish for three months after. The whale seems to come and go, in some waters...."

"These?" she asked.

He nodded. "It's uncertain, here. We're working over now into better hunting grounds. The Sally's done well, thus far, anyway. Almost a thousand barrels, and not out a year. I've heard of ships that came home with empty casks."

She looked at him curiously. "I think you know more about the work than most men aboard," she said. "Yet you've not had the experience...."

"I've picked it up at games, read it, guessed it," he said pleasantly. "They know more about the practical end than I. I haven't been tried out yet, you know."

She smiled. "Mr. Tichel says you're a Jonah," she told him. "I think he would be in favor of throwing you overboard."

He laughed cheerfully. She added: "I hope you're not one. I'm anxious that Cap'n Wing should make a big record on this cruise. It's my first with him, you know...."

His eyes were sober; but he said: "We'll fill the casks, all right. I wouldn't worry."

She looked toward him and said: "Yes, we will." There was an immense amount of quiet certainty and determination in her voice. Brander looked at her for an instant, then turned to give some direction to the man at the wheel. The Sally heeled awkwardly to the thrust of the wind, and battered at the sea with her blunt bows. The rigging creaked and tugged. Willis Cox, under the boathouse, had dropped his book in his lap and was dozing in his chair; the two harpooners had gone below. Forward, Faith could see two or three men sprawled on the deck, asleep.... The warm, afternoon wind seemed slumber laden; the Sally Sims herself was like a ship that walked in her sleep. A hush hung over them all, so that Faith and Brander unconsciously lowered their voices.

Faith asked casually: "Why is it that you and Mr. Tobey do not like each other?"

If he was surprised at the question, Brander did not show it. He said frankly: "I've no dislike for Mr. Tobey. He's an able officer. He knows his business."

"He does not like you," Faith said. "Why not?"

Brander smiled. "It may be," he admitted, "that Mr. Tobey is lacking in a sense of humor. I've a way of laughing at things.... Mr. Trant, on the Thomas Morgan, used to curse me for grinning so much of the time. Perhaps Mr. Tobey...."

He did not finish the sentence; he seemed to consider it unnecessary, or unwise.... Faith said nothing.... They stood together, eyes off across the water, balancing unconsciously to the motion of the ship. Their shoulders were almost brushing.... Brander felt the light contact on his coat; and he moved away a little, inconspicuously....

She turned at last toward the companion; but after one step, stopped and looked back at him. "I think," she said, "that Mr. Tobey believes you mean to claim that find of ambergris belongs to you."

Brander smiled, and nodded. "I know he does. There's no harm in puzzling Mr. Tobey."

"There may be harm—for you—in his believing that," she said; and for a moment Brander's level eyes met hers, and she saw a flame in his. He said quietly:

"I'm not particularly concerned...."