The Sea Bride Part 36

When she did not stir, though the men strove till their veins were like to burst, some cursed despairingly; but Faith did not. Nor Dan'l. Dan'l was quiet, watching, smiling at his thoughts.... He let Faith have her way. Before the next tide, they had rigged the cutting-in tackle to give a stouter pull at the kedge; but this time the whale line parted and lashed along the decks, and more than one man was struck and bruised and cut by it....

Dan'l said then: "You see, we're here to stay. Best thing is to lower and make for the nearest port."

"Leave the ship?" Faith asked.

"Yes. What else?"

"No. We'll not leave her."

He smiled. "What, then?"

"It's a week past full moon," she said. "There'll be higher tides on the new moon.... Still higher on the next full. We'll float her, one time or another."

Dan'l chuckled. "An easterly'll drive her high and dry, 'fore then."

Faith's eyes blazed. "I tell you, Dan'l, we stick with the _Sally_; and we get her safe away.... Are you afraid to stick?"

He laughed, outright, pleasantly. "Pshaw, Faith.... You know I'm not afraid." He could be likeable when he tried; she liked him, faintly, in that moment. She gripped his hand.

"Good, Dan'l. We'll manage it, in the end...."

So they settled for the waiting; and Dan'l put the men to work repairing the harm the storm had done the _Sally_. Her rigging was strained; it had parted here and there. She had lost some canvas. Willis c.o.x's boat had been carried away.... They rove new rigging, spread new sails, replaced Willis's boat with one of the spares.... There was work for all hands for a month, to put the _Sally_ in shape again.

One thing favored them. The _Sally_, for all her clumsy lines, was staunch; and the shock when, she drove her bow upon the sand had opened never a seam. She was leaking no more than a sweet ship will. They found a cask or two of oil that had burst in the hold; and there was some confusion among the stores.... But these were small matters, easily set right....

The new moon was due on the fifth day after they struck. On the fourth, another bottle of whiskey appeared in the fo'c's'le, and two men were drunk. Dan'l had the men whipped.... Faith made no objection to this; but she watched the faces of the others.... Watched the officers, and Brander in particular, and Mauger.... Brander, since that morning of Noll's death, had avoided her more strictly.... He and Dan'l did not speak, save when they must. She saw the man was keeping a guard upon himself; and she puzzled over this. She could not know that Brander was afire with joy at the new hope that was awakening in him; afire with a vision of her.... He fought against this, held himself in check; and she saw only that he was morose and still and that he avoided her eye....

The high tides of the new moon failed to float them; and there was growling forward. Dan'l said, openly, that he believed they would never go free. The men heard; and the superst.i.tions of the sea began to play about the fo'c's'le. There was unrest; the men felt approaching the possible liberation from ship's discipline when they abandoned the _Sally_. They remembered the ambergris beneath the cabin. There was a fortune.... They could take no oil with them; but they could take that when the time should come to leave the ship. Plenty of room in one boat for it and half a dozen men besides.... They fretted at the waiting, called it hopeless, as Dan'l did.... The barrier between officers and men was somewhat lowered; more than one of the men spoke to Brander of the ambergris. Did he claim it for his own?...

Faith, one day, heard a man talking to Brander amidships; she caught only a word or two. One of these words was "'Gris." She saw that the man was asking Brander a question; she saw that on Brander's answer, the man grinned with greed in his eyes, and turned away to whisper to two of his fellows....

She wondered what Brander had said to him, why Brander had not silenced the man. And she watched Brander the closer, her heart sickening with a fear she would not name....

They had landed before this and explored their island.... Low and flat and no more than a mile or two in extent, it had fruit a-plenty, and a spring of good water.... But none dwelt anywhere upon it. It soon palled upon them; they stuck by the ship; and the days held clear and fine and the nights were warm, and the crescent moon above them flattened, night by night, till it was no longer a crescent, but half a circle of silver radiance that touched the beach and the trees and the sea with magic fingers....

That night, with the fall tides still a week away, Roy Kilcup came into the waist and looked aft. There was no officer in sight at the moment save old Tichel, and Roy hailed him softly.... Tichel went forward to where the boy stood; they whispered together. Then Tichel went with Roy toward the fo'c's'le....

Faith was in her cabin; Dan'l was in the main cabin; and Willis and Brander were playing cribbage near him when the outcry forward roused them. A man yelled.... They were on deck in tumbling haste; and Faith was at their heels....

Came Tichel, dragging Mauger by the collar. His right hand gripped Mauger; his left held a bottle. He shook the one-eyed man till Mauger's teeth rattled; and he brandished the bottle. "Caught the pig," he cried furiously. "Here he is. With this hid under his blanket...."

Mauger protested: "I never put it there...." Tichel cuffed him into silence. Dan'l asked sharply:

"What's that, Mr. Tichel?"

"Whiskey, Mr. Tobey. He took it forward and hid it in his bunk...."

Faith said: "Tell the whole of it, Mr. Tichel. What happened?" She looked from Tichel to Brander. Brander was standing stiffly; she thought his face was white. Mauger hung in Tichel's grip.

Old Tichel had given a promise to Roy; Roy had begged him not to tell that the boy had spied. Tichel said now:

"I saw him go forra'd, with something under his coat. Never thought for a minute; then it come to me what it might be. I took after him. Rest of the men were on deck, sleeping.... It's hot, below, you'll mind. I dropped down quietly. Mauger, here, was in his bunk. I routed him out, and rummaged, and there you are, ma'am." He shook the bottle triumphantly.

Faith asked the one-eyed man: "Where did you get it, Mauger?"

"Never knowed it was there," Mauger swore. "Honest t'the Lord, ma'am...."

Tichel slapped his face stunningly.... Faith said: "No more of that, Mr.

Tichel. Dan'l, what do you think?"

Dan'l lifted his hand, with a glance at Brander. "Why--nothing!

Somebody's been doing it; him as well as another."

"Willis," Faith asked. "What's your notion?"

"I guess Mauger done it."

"Brander?"

Brander lifted his head and met her eyes. "Other men have found whiskey in their bunks without knowing how it got there," he said. "I believe Mauger."

Old Tichel snarled: "I'm saying I saw him take it aft." He dropped Mauger and took a fierce step toward Brander. "Ye think I'd lie?"

"I think you're mistaken," Brander said evenly. Tichel leaped at him; Brander gripped the other's arms at the elbow, held him. Faith, said sharply:

"Enough of that. We'll end this thing, to-night. Mr. Tobey, get lanterns, lights, search the ship till you find the rest of this stuff."

She took the whiskey bottle, opened it, and poured its contents over the rail. "Search it out," she said. "Be about it."

Save Dan'l Tobey, the officers stood stock still, as though not understanding. Dan'l acted as quickly as though he had expected the order. He sent Silva, the harpooner, to get the fo'm'st hands together forward and keep them there under his eye. He sent Tichel and Yella' Boy into the main hold; Willis and Long Jim into the after 'tween decks.

Brander and Eph Hitch were to search the cabin and the captain's storeroom; and Faith went down with them to give them the keys.... Loum, Kellick, and Tinch, the cook, were put to rummaging about the after deck and amidships....

There was no need of lights upon the deck itself; the moon bathed the _Sally_ in its rays, and one might have read by them without undue effort. Below, the whale-oil lanterns went to and fro.... Brander and Hitch made short work of their task; and they came on deck with Faith.

Dan'l sent Brander to rummage through the steerage where the harpooners slept; and at Faith's suggestion, Hitch and Loum went aloft to the mastheads to make sure there was no secret cache there.... They were an hour or more at their search of the _Sally_; and at the end of that time they were no wiser than they were before. Faith had gone below before the end; she came on deck as Tichel and Yella' Boy reported nothing found below. She asked Dan'l:

"Have you found anything?"

"No."

"Where have you looked?"

Dan'l said: "Everywhere aboard her, Faith. The stuff's well hidden, sure...."

Faith said quietly: "If it's not on the _Sally_, it's near her. Search the boats, Mr. Tobey."

Dan'l nodded. "But it'd not be in them," he said. "That's sure enough."

"It's nowhere else, you say. Try...."