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...."