What shadows remained, Roy was able to clear away. Roy, who had hated
Brander, and who had hated Faith, yet in whom lived a strain of true
blood that could not but answer to these two in the end. The evil in
Dan'l had been writ in his face for any man to see, when Roy found him
clutching Faith; and Roy was not blind.
The boy abased himself; he was pitifully ashamed. Still hoarse from the
choking Dan'l had given him, he told how he had stolen the whiskey at
the man's bidding.... A little at first; a ten-gallon keg in the end....
Told how he had himself filled Brander's boat jug with the liquor, and
hidden a bottle in Mauger's bunk, and lied to old Tichel in the matter.
Told the whole tale, and made his peace with them, while Faith and
Brander watched each other over the boy's sobbing head with eloquent
eyes....
For the rest; Silva was dead, and they buried him in the sand of the
beach. Mauger had a shallow knife slit along his ribs; Willis Cox had a
broken jaw. The others had suffered nothing worse than bruises, save
only Dan'l Tobey. Dan'l's knee was smashed and splintered, and he lay in
a stupor in the cabin, Willis watching beside him.
Those who had fled to the boats came shamedly back at last; and Faith
and Brander met them at the rail, and Faith spoke to them. They had done
wrong, she told them; but there was a chance of wiping out the score by
bending to the toil she set them. They were already sick of
adventuring; they swarmed aboard like homesick boys. She and Brander
told them what to do, and drove them to it....
Before that day was gone, they had half her load out of the _Sally_; and
at full tide that night, with every hand tugging at a line or breasting
a capstan bar, they hauled her off. She slid an inch, two inches,
four.... She moved a foot, three feet.... They freed her, by sheer power
of their determination that she must come free. They dragged her full
ten feet before the suction of the sand beneath her keel began to slack,
and ten feet more before she floated free.... Then the boats lowered,
and towed her safe off shore, and anchored her there.
After that, three days to get the casks inboard again and stowed below.
Three days in which Dan'l Tobey passed from suffering to delirium.
Brander had tended his wound as best he could; but the bone was
splintered and the flesh was shattered, and there came an hour when the
flesh about the wound turned green and black. It gave off a horrible
fetid odor of decay.