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."