An unrest seized Noll Wing; an unrest that was like fear. He assumed, by
small degrees, the aspect of a hunted man. It was as though the death of
Slatter prefigured to him what his own end would be. His nerves betrayed
him; he could not bear to have any man approach him from behind, and he
struck out, nervously, at Willis Cox one day when Willis spoke from one
side, where Noll had not seen him standing.
The continual storms of the Solander irked him; the racking work of
whaling, when it was necessary to run to port with each kill, fretted
the flesh from his bones. They lost a whale one day, in a sudden squall
that developed into a gale and swept them far to the southward; and when
the weather moderated, and Dan'l Tobey started to work back to the
Grounds again, Noll would have none of it.
"Set your course t'the east'ard," he commanded. "I'm fed up with the
Solander. We'll hit the islands again...."
Dan'l protested that there was nowhere such whaling as the Solander
offered; but Noll would not be persuaded. He resented the attempt to
argue with him. "No, by God," he swore. "A pity if a man can't have his
way. Hell with the Solander, Dan'l. I'm sick o' storms, and cold. Get
north t'where it's warm again...."
So they did as he insisted, and ran into slack times once more. The men
at first exulted in their new leisure; they were well enough content to
kill a whale and loaf a week before another kill. Then they began to be
impatient with inaction; discontent arose among them. They remembered
the ambergris; and their talk was that they need stay out no longer,
that the voyage was already a success, that they had a right to expect
to head for home.
Brander, ever among them as he had promised himself he would be, worked
against this discontent. He tried to hearten them; they gave him half
attention, and some measure of liking.... But their sulking held and
grew upon them.
There was as much ill feeling aft as forward. Roy, released from his
irons long before, had not spoken to Faith since his release. He hated
his sister with that hatred which sometimes arises between blood kin,
and which is more violent than any other. Let lovers quarrel; let
brothers clash; let son and father, or mother and daughter, or brother
and sister go asunder, and there is no bitterness to equal the
bitterness between them. It is as though the strength of their former
affection served to intensify their hate. It is like the hatred of a
woman scorned; she is able to hate the more, because she once has loved.
Roy hated Faith; and with the ingenuity of youth, he found out ways to
torment her. He perceived that Faith must always love him, he perceived
that her thoughts hovered over him as do the thoughts of a mother; and
he took pleasure in agonizing her with his own misdeeds. He lied for
the pleasure of lying; he swore roundly; and once, under Dan'l's gentle
guidance, he pilfered rum and drank himself into the likeness of a
beast. When Faith chided him for that, he told her with drunken good
nature that she was to blame; that she had driven him to it. Faith's
sense of justice was strong; she was too level of head to condemn
herself; nevertheless, she was made miserable by what the boy had
done.... Yet she led Noll to punish him for this theft, more sternly
than before; and afterward, she had Roy sent forward to take his place
among the men, and the cabin was forbidden ground to him thereafter.
Noll was wax in Faith's hands in these days. His fear, growing upon him,
had shaken all the fiber out of the man. He could be swayed by Dan'l, by
old Tichel, by Faith, by almost any one.... Save in a single matter. He
was drinking steadily, now; and drinking more than ever before. He was
never sober, never without the traces of his liquor in his eyes and his
loose lips and slack muscles. And they could not sway him in this
matter. He would not be denied the liquor that he craved.
Faith tried to win it away from him; she tried to strengthen the man's
own will to fight the enemy that was destroying him. She tried to fan to
life the ancient flame of pride.... But there was no grain of strength
left in Noll for her to work on. He waved her away, and filled his
glass....
She might have destroyed what liquor remained aboard the _Sally_; but
she would not. That would not cure; it would only put off the end. At
their first port, Noll would get what he wanted.... And there were
islands all about them; he could reach land within a matter of
twenty-four hours, or forty-eight, at any time. She fought to help Noll
help himself; she would not do more. Noll was a man, not a baby desiring
the fire which must be kept beyond its reach. He knew his enemy, and he
embraced it knowingly.
Faith never felt more keenly the fact of her marriage to Noll than in
those last days of his life. She never thought of herself apart from
him; and when he debauched himself, she felt soiled as though she were
herself degraded. Nevertheless, she clung to him with all her soul;
clung to him, lived the vows she had given him.... There were other
times, after that first, when she dreamed of Brander.... But she could
not curb her dreams.... He was much in them; but waking, she put the man
away from her. She was Noll's; Noll was hers. Inescapable....
Brander avoided her. His heart was sick; she possessed it utterly. But
he gave no sign; he never relaxed the grip in which he held himself. Now
and then, on deck, when Noll swore at her, or whined, or fretted,
Brander had to swing away and put the thing behind him. But he did it;
he was strong enough to do this; he was almost strong enough to keep his
thoughts from Faith. Almost.... But not quite.... She dwelt always with
him; he was sick with sorrow, and pity, and yearning for the right to
cherish her.
They spoke when they had to, in cabin or on deck; but they were never
alone, and they avoided each the other as they would have shunned a
precipice....
Save for one day, a single day.... A day when Faith called Brander to
her on the deck and spoke to him.... A single day, that would have been,
but for the strength of Faith, the bloody destruction of them both.
This incident was the climax of two trains of events, extending over
days.... Extending, in the one case, back to that first day when Dan'l
had roused the brand of jealousy in Noll to flame. Dan'l had never let
that flame die out. He fanned it constantly; and when he saw in Faith's
eyes, after the matter of Roy's first theft of the whiskey, that she had
guessed his part in it, he threw himself more hotly into his intrigue.
He kept at Noll's side whenever it was possible; he whispered....
He spoke openly of Brander's fondness for the men, of Brander's habit of
talking with them so constantly. Faith heard him strike this vein, again
and again.... He harped upon it to Noll, seeming to defend Brander at
the same time that he accused.... He played upon the strain until even
Faith's belief in Brander was shaken. There was always the matter of the
ambergris. Brander might have ended it with a word, but he would not
give Dan'l Tobey that satisfaction. He would not say, forthright, that
the 'gris belonged to the _Sally_.... And Dan'l magnified this matter,
and many others.... Until even Faith found it hard not to doubt the
fourth mate.... She caught herself, more than once, watching him when he
laughed and talked with the men. Was there need of that? Why did he do
it? She could find no answer....
Noll feared Brander more and more; and Dan'l covertly taunted the
captain with this fear. He roused Noll, time on time, to flagging gusts
of rage; but always these passed in words.... And Noll fell back into
his lethargy of drink again. Dan'l began to fear there was not enough
man left in Noll to act.... He turned his guns on Faith, accusing her as
he accused Brander....
But words were light things. Noll, moved though he might be, had in his
heart a trust in Faith which Dan'l found it hard to shake. He might
never have shaken it, had not luck favored him.... And this luck came to
pass on the day Faith sought speech with Brander.
That move, on Faith's part, was the result of an increasing peril in the
fo'c's'le. The men were getting drink again.
This began one day when a fo'm'st hand came aft to take the wheel and
old Tichel smelled the liquor on him, and saw that the man's feet were
unsteady, and flew into one of his tigerish fits of rage.... He drove
the man forward with blows and kicks; and he came aft with his teeth
bared and flamed to Noll Wing, and men were sent for and questioned.
Three of them had been drinking. They were badly frightened; they were
sullen; nevertheless, in the end, under old Tichel's fist, one of them
said he had found a quart bottle, filled with whiskey, in his bunk the
night before.... Tichel accused him of stealing it; the man stuck to his
tale and could not be shaken.
The men could not come at the stores through the cabin; there was
always an officer about the deck or below. Tichel thought they might
have cut through from the after 'tween decks, and the stores were
shifted in an effort to find such a secret entrance to the captain's
stores. But none was found; there was no way....
Three days later, there was whiskey forward again. Found, as before, in
a bunk.... Two men drunk, rope's endings at the rail.... But no solution
to the mystery.
Two days after that, the same thing; four days later, a repetition. And
so on, at intervals of days, for a month on end. The whiskey dribbled
forward a quart at a time; the men drank it.... And never a trace to the
manner of the theft.
In the end, Roy Kilcup found a bottle in his bunk, and drank the bulk of
it himself, so that he was deathly sick and like to die. Faith,
tormented beyond endurance, looking everywhere for help, chose at last
to appeal to Brander.
Brander had the deck, that day. Willis Cox and Tichel were sleeping....
Dan'l was in the main cabin, alone; Noll in the after cabin, stupid with
drink. Roy had been sick all the night before, with Willis Cox and
Tichel working over him, counting the pounding heart-beats, wetting the
boy's head, working the poison out of him. Roy was forward, in his bunk,
now, still sodden.
Faith came from the after cabin, passed Dan'l and went up on deck.
Something purposeful in her face caught Dan'l's attention; and he went
to the foot of the cabin companion and listened. He heard her call
softly:
"Mr. Brander."
Dan'l thought he knew where Brander would be. In the waist of the
_Sally_, no doubt. There was a man at the wheel. Faith did not wish this
man to hear what she had to say. So she met Brander just forward of the
cabin skylight by the boathouse; and Dan'l, straining his ears, could
hear.