"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.