The Sea Bride Part 25

The fourth mate hesitated; then he said quietly: "All right. If he goes, I go too."

Noll's head jerked back as though he had been struck; and his red eyes widened and narrowed again as he peered at Brander, and he hesitated unsteadily. "Wha's that?" he asked. "Wha's that you say?"

"I say I'll go if he goes."

Noll's head drooped and swayed wearily; but after a moment he asked: "Wha' for?"

"The man shipped for the cruise," said Brander. "He does his work. I'll not be a party to putting him ash.o.r.e--dumping him in this G.o.d-forsaken hole."

Noll raised a hand. "Don' speak of G.o.d," he said reprovingly. "You don'

understand Him, Mr. Brander." Brander said nothing; and Noll's hand dropped and he whined: "Man can't do what he wants on his own ship...."

Brander said: "Do as you like, sir. I think you should let him stay. He means no harm...."

Noll waved his hand. "Oh, a'right," he agreed. "Say no more 'bout it at all. Let be. Keep'm; keep'm, Mr. Brander. But lis'en." He eyed Brander shrewdly. "Lis'en. I know one thing. He's goin' to knife me some night.

I know. He's a murd'rer. And you're defending him.... Pr'tecting him.

Birds of a feather flock t'gether, Mr. Brander." The captain got unsteadily to his feet, raised a threatening hand. "When he kills me; just r'member. My blood's on your own head, sir."

Brander hesitated; his heart revolted. His impulse was to leave the ship, take Mauger, trust his luck.... But he thought of Faith. This man, her husband, was dying.... He could see that. And when he was gone, there would be trouble aboard the _Sally_. Faith herself meant trouble; the ambergris in the captain's storeroom meant more trouble.... Brander knew it might well be that Faith would need him in that day.... He could not leave her....

He said quietly: "I take that responsibility, sir."

Noll was slumped in his chair again. "Go 'way," he said, and waved his hand. "Go 'way."

That night, in the small hours, Noll screamed in a way that woke the ship; he had come out of drunken slumber, desperate with a vivid hallucination that appalled him....

He thought that Mauger was at him with a sheath knife, and that Brander was at Mauger's back. Faith and Dan'l fought to soothe him; Faith in her loose dressing-gown, her hair in its thick braid.... Dan'l had more eyes for Faith than for Noll. He had never seen her thus before; never seen her so beautiful; never seen her, he thought, so desperately to be desired.... His lips were wet at the sight of her....

Noll's terror racked and tore at the man; it seemed to rip the very flesh from his bones. When it pa.s.sed, at last, and he fell asleep again, he was wasted like a corpse.

Dan'l, looking at Noll and at Faith, wished Noll were a corpse indeed.

XX

A change was coming to pa.s.s in Faith at this time. As the strength flowed out of Noll, it seemed to flow into her. As Noll weakened, Faith was growing strong.

She had never lacked a calm strength of her own; the strength of a good woman. But she was acquiring now the strength and resolution of a man.

At first, this was unconscious; the spectacle of Noll's degeneration moved her by the force of contrast. But for a long time she clung to the picture of the Noll of the past, clung to the hope that the captain would become again the man she had married. And so long as she did this, she made herself a part of him, his support.... She merged herself in him, thought of herself only as his helpmate.... She had always tried to stimulate his pride and strength; she had tried to lead him to rea.s.sume the domination of the _Sally_ and all aboard her. And in the days before Noll went out to kill his whale, she thought for a time she had succeeded.

But when Noll came back to her that day, exhausted by the struggle, the fire gone out of him, Faith perceived that he was a weak vessel, cracking and breaking before her eyes.

Noll was gone; he was no longer a man. His hands and his heart had not the force needed to enable him to command the _Sally_, to make the voyage successful, to bring the bark safely back to port in the end.

Faith saw this; but she refused to consider the chance of failure. She had married Noll when he was at the height of his apparent strength; the signs of his disintegration were not yet apparent. They had swept upon him suddenly.... But she would not have it said of him, when he was gone, that he had sailed the seas too long; that he had failed at last, and shamefully....

She had come to look upon the success of this last voyage of Noll's as a sacred charge; and when Noll's shoulders weakened, she prepared deliberately to take the burden on her own. The _Sally_ must come safely home, with filled casks for old Jonathan Felt; she must come safely home, no matter what happened to Noll--or to herself. The prosperity of the _Sally Sims_ was almost a religion to Faith....

She had begun to study navigation more to pa.s.s the long and dreary days than from any other motive; she applied herself to it now more ardently.

And she began, at the same time, to study the men about her; to weigh them; to consider their fitness for the responsibilities that must fall upon them. The fo'm'st hands, and particularly the mates, she weighed in the balance. The mates, and above all Dan'l Tobey. For if Noll were to go, Dan'l, by all the ancient laws of the sea, would become master of the ship; and their destinies would lie in his hands....

Short of the Solander Grounds, they struck good whaling, and lingered for a time; and day by day the tuns and casks were filled, and the _Sally_ sank lower in the water with her increasing load. They were two-thirds full, and not yet two years out. Good whaling.... At dinner in the cabin one day, Dan'l Tobey said to Faith:

"You've brought us good luck, Faith, by coming along, this cruise. We never did much better, since I've been with Cap'n Wing."

Faith looked to Noll. Noll was eating slowly, paying them no attention.

Silence was falling upon the captain in those days, like a foreshadowing of the great silence into which he would presently depart. He said nothing; so Faith said: "Yes. We've done well.... I'm glad."

Old James Tichel looked slyly from face to face. "And the 'gris, stowed below us here, will make it a fine fat cruise for old Jonathan Felt when we come home," he chuckled.

At the mention of the ambergris, a little silence fell. Brander was at the table, Brander and the others. Dan'l and Willis c.o.x and young Roy Kilcup looked at Brander, as though expecting him to speak. He said nothing, and old Tichel, gnawing at his food, chuckled again, as though pleased with what he had said.

The ambergris, so rich a treasure in so small a bulk, had never been forgotten for a minute by any man in the cabin; nor by Faith. But they had not spoken of it of late; there was nothing to be said, and there was danger in the saying. It was as well that it be forgotten until they were home again.... There were too many chances for trouble in the stuff....

When Brander did not speak, however, Dan'l gently prodded him. He said to Tichel: "You're forgetting that Mr. Brander claims it for his own."

Tichel chuckled again. "Oh, aye, I was forgetting that small matter," he agreed. "My memory is very short at times."

Still Brander said nothing. Dan'l looked toward him. "I'll be warrant Mr. Brander does not forget," he said.

Brander looked toward Dan'l, and he smiled amiably. "Thank you," he told the mate. "Keep me reminded. It had all but slipped from my mind."

There was so much hostility in the air, in the slow words of the men, that Faith said quietly: "We'll be on the Solander, soon. I'm looking forward to that, Dan'l. You've seen the Rock?"

She hoped to change them to another topic; but Dan'l brought it smoothly back again. "Yes," he said. "Yes.... Last cruise, the _Betty Howe_, out of Port Russell, picked up a sizable chunk of 'gris not a week before we touched the grounds. That brought two-sixty to the pound, I heard."

"How much was it?" Willis c.o.x asked; and Dan'l looked to Willis and said amiably:

"Fifteen pound or so. No more than a thimbleful to what we've got....

That is to say, to what Mr. Brander's got, below here."

Brander had finished eating; he rose to go on deck. But Roy Kilcup could no longer hold his tongue. He got to his feet in Brander's path, demanded sharply:

"Do you honestly mean to claim that for your own, Mr. Brander? Are you so much of a hog?"

Brander looked down at the boy; and he smiled. "I'll give you your share, now, if it will stop your worrying, youngster," he said.

"I want to know what you're going to do," Roy insisted. "Are you going to stick to your claim?"

"Others want to know," said Brander, and stepped to one side to pa.s.s Roy. Roy would have spoken again; but Noll said heavily from the head of the table:

"Roy, let be."

That put a moment's silence upon them all. In this silence, Brander went on his way to the deck. Roy stared after him for a moment, then sat down in his place. His face was sullen and angry.... No one spoke of the matter again; but Dan'l saw that Faith was thoughtful. Faith was puzzling over Brander, trying to fathom the man.... She was troubled and uneasy.... Dan'l saw that Noll had lifted his heavy head and was watching her.