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."