"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."