Part 14

She repeated the last sentence a second time, so that Noll got it word for word; and then she took the log from him, and blotted it, and put it away. Dan'l Tobey protested:

"Aren't you saying anything about Mauger?"

Faith smiled quietly. "Thank you for reminding me," She opened the log again, bade Noll write, said slowly: "The man Mauger saved Mr. Brander's life by tripping Slatter as he charged." Dan'l grimaced as she finished....

"Now," said Faith, "Slatter was not important; at least he is no longer important. But there is one thing, Noll, that you must stop.... The whiskey that went forward...."

Noll looked at her slowly, frowning as though he sought to understand; Dan'l said:

"That was probably Slatter, stole it. The men say so...."

"He took it forward," Faith agreed. "But he did not get it from the stores. He could not." She hesitated, her lips white; then she set them firmly. "Dan'l, fetch Roy here," she said.

Dan'l was so surprised that for an instant he did not stir. "Roy?" he repeated. "What's he...."

Faith looked to her husband. "Will you tell him to bring Roy?" she asked.

Noll asked heavily: "What's the boy.... Go along, Dan'l. Fetch him."

Dan'l got up at once, and went out, closing the door behind him. They heard him go on deck.... A minute later, he was back with Roy at his heels, and Faith saw her brother's face was white. She asked quickly:

"Roy, why did you steal a jug of whiskey from the stores?"

Roy cried, on the instant: "That's a lie."

Faith studied him. He expected accusation, questioning. Instead she nodded. "All right."

"Who says I stole whiskey?" Roy demanded.

"I," Faith told him.

"Who.... Somebody lied to you...."

"No."

Roy was near tears with bafflement. "Why.... What makes you...."

Faith asked quietly: "Don't you want to tell?"

"It's a lie, I say."

She looked to her husband; and Noll saw they were all waiting on him, and he tried to rise to the occasion. "By God, Roy.... What did you go and do that for? God's sake, can't a man have a ship without a pack of thieves on her? Mr. Tobey, you...." He wavered, his eyes swung helplessly to Faith. He seemed to ask her to speak for him; and she said to Dan'l:

"Take him on deck, Dan'l. Till Cap'n Wing decides...."

Roy insisted. "I tell you, I didn't...."

But Dan'l Tobey hushed him. Dan'l was getting his first glimpse of the new Faith; and he was afraid of her. He took Roy's arm, led him out and away.... Faith and Noll were left alone.

At noon that day, at Noll Wing's profane command, Roy was put in irons and locked in the after 'tween decks to stay a week on bread and water. The boy cursed Faith to her face for that; and Faith went to her cabin, and dropped on her knees and prayed.

But she kept a steady face for the men, and in particular she kept a steady eye for Dan'l Tobey. She knew Dan'l, now.... Dan'l had warned Roy, before bringing him to the cabin. He must have warned the boy, for Roy was prepared for the accusation. He must have warned the boy, therefore he must have known what Faith would assert....

And Faith knew enough of Dan'l's ascendancy over Roy to be sure the mate had prompted her brother's theft.

She must watch Dan'l, fight him. And ... she thanked God for Brander. There was a man, a man on her side.... She was not to fight alone.

She dreamed of Brander that night. He was battling for her, in her dream, against shadowy and unseen things. And in her dream, she thought he was her husband.

XXIII

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.

Faith said: "Mr. Brander, I'm going to ask you to help me."

Brander told her: "I'd like to. What is it you want done?"

"It's--Roy. I'm desperately worried, Mr. Brander."

"He's all right, Mr. Cox tells me. He'll be well enough in a few hours...."

"It's not just--this drunkenness, Mr. Brander. It's--more. My brother's.... He is in my charge, in a way. Father bade me take care of him. And he's--taking the wrong path."

Brander said quietly: "Yes."

Dan'l looked toward the after cabin, thought of bringing Noll to hear.... But there was no harm in this that they were saying; no harm.... Rather, good.... He listened; and Faith said steadily:

"My husband is not--not the man he was, Mr. Brander. Mr. Tobey.... I can't trust him. I've got to come to you...."

Dan'l decided, desperately, to bring Noll and risk it, trust to his luck and to his tongue to twist their words.... He went softly across to the after cabin and shook Noll's shoulder; and when the captain opened his eyes, Dan'l whispered:

"Come, Noll Wing. You've got to hear this...."

Noll sat up stupidly. "What? Hear what?... What's that you say?"

Dan'l said: "Faith and Brander are together, on deck, whispering...." He banged his clenched fist into his open hand. "By God, sir.... I've grown up with Faith; I like her.... But I can't stand by and see them do this to you...."

"What are they about?" Noll asked, his face flushing. He was on his feet. Dan'l gripped his arm....

"I heard her promise him you would soon be gone, sir.... That you were sick.... That you...."

Noll strode into the cabin; Dan'l whispered: "Quiet! Come...." He led him to the foot of the companion-stair, bade him listen.

And it was then the malicious gods played into Dan'l's evil hands; for as they listened, Faith was saying.... "Try to make him like you.... But be careful. He doesn't, now.... If he guessed...."

Brander said something which they could not hear; a single word; and Faith cried:

"You can. You're a man. He can't help admiring you in the end. I--" She hesitated, said helplessly: "I'm putting myself into your hands...."

Dan'l had wit to seize his fortune; he cried out: "By God, sir...."

But there was no need of spur to Noll Wing now. The captain had reached the deck with a single rush, Dan'l at his heels.... Faith and Brander sprang apart before their eyes; and because the innocent have always the appearance of the guilty, there was guilt in every line of these two now.

Noll Wing, confronting them, had in that moment the stature of a man; he was erect and strong, his eyes were level and cold. He looked from Faith to Brander, and he said:

"Brander, be gone. Faith, come below."

Brander took a step forward. Faith said quickly to him: "No." And she smiled at him as he halted in obedience.

Then she turned to her husband, passed him, went down into the cabin. And Noll, with a last glance at Brander, descended on her heels.

Dan'l, left facing the fourth mate, grinned triumphantly; and for an instant he saw death in Brander's eyes, so that his mirth was frozen.... Then Brander turned away.

XXIV

Faith went down into the main cabin, crossed and entered the cabin across the stern, turned there to await her husband. He followed her slowly; he came in, and shut the door behind him. The man was controlling himself; nevertheless, he thrust this door shut with a force that shook the thin partition between the cabins.... And he snapped the bolt that held it closed.

Then he turned and looked at Faith. There was a furious strength in his countenance at that moment; but it was like the strength of a maniac. His lips twitched tensely; his eyes moved like the eyes of a man who is dizzy from too much turning on his own heels.... They jerked away from Faith, returned to her, jerked away again.... All without any movement of Noll's head. And as the man's eyes wavered and wrenched back to her thus, the pupils contracted and narrowed in an effort to focus upon her. For the rest, he was flushed, brick red.... His whole face seemed to swell.

He was inhuman; there was an ape-like and animal fury in the man as he looked at his wife....

Abruptly, he jerked up his hands and pressed them against his face and turned away; it was as though he thrust himself away with this pressure of his hands. He turned his back on her, and went to his desk, and unlocked a drawer. Faith knew the drawer; she was not surprised when he drew out of it a revolver.

Bending over the desk, with this weapon in his hand, Noll Wing made sure every chamber was loaded.... He paid her no attention. Faith watched him for an instant; then she turned to the bench that ran across the stern and picked up from it a bit of sewing, embroidery.... She sat down composedly on the bench, crossed her knees in the comfortable attitude of relaxation which women like to assume. One foot rested on the floor; the other swayed back and forth, as though beating time, a few inches above the floor. It is impossible for the average man to cross his knees in this fashion, just as it is impossible for a woman to throw a ball. Sitting thus, Faith began to sew. She was outlining the petal of an embroidered flower; and she gave this work her whole attention.

She did not look up at Noll. The man finished his examination of the weapon; he turned it in his hand; he lifted it and leveled it at Faith. Still Faith did not look up; she seemed completely unconcerned. Noll said harshly:

"Faith!"

She looked up then, met his eyes fairly, smiled a little. "What is it, Noll?"

"I'm going to kill you," he said, with stiff lips.

"All right," she said, and bent her head above her sewing once more, disregarding him.

Noll was stupefied.... This was not surprise; it was the helplessness which courage inspires in a coward. For Noll was a coward in those last days.... His face twisted; his hand was shaking.... He stared over the revolver barrel at Faith's brown head. Her hair was parted in the middle, drawn back about her face. The white line of skin where the hair was parted fascinated him; he could not take his eyes from it. The revolver muzzle lowered without his being conscious of this fact; the weapon hung in his hand.... His eyes were fixed on Faith's head, on the part in her hair.... She wore an old, tortoise comb, stuck downward into the hair at the back of her head, its top projecting upward.... A singular, old-fashioned little ornament.... There was a silver mounting on it; and the light glistened on this silver, and caught Noll's eye, and held it....

Faith continued her quiet sewing. And Noll's tense muscles, little by little, relaxed.... His fingers loosed their grip on the revolver butt; it dropped to the floor with a clatter. The sound seemed to rouse Noll; he strode toward Faith. "By God," he cried. "You'll...." He swung down a hand and gathered the fabric of her work between harsh fingers. Her needle was in the midst of a stitch; it pricked him.... He did not feel the tiny wound. He would have snatched the stuff out of her hands.... He felt as though it were defending her....

But when his hand swept down between hers and caught the bit of embroidery, Faith looked up at him again, and she caught his eyes. That halted him; he stood for an instant motionless, bending above her, their faces not six inches apart.... Then the man jerked his hand away.... He released his grip on the bit of fancy work; but the needle was deep in his finger, so that he pulled it out of the cloth. The thread followed it; when his quick movement drew the thread to full length, the fabric was jerked out of Faith's unresisting hands. It dangled by the thread from the needle that stuck in Noll's finger; and he saw it, and jerked the needle out with a quick, spasmodic gesture, and flung it to one side. He did not look at it; he was looking, still, at Faith.

"Put that away," he said hoarsely.

Faith smiled, glanced toward the bit of white upon the floor. "I'm afraid there's blood on it," she said.

"Blood ..." he repeated, under his breath. "Blood...." She folded her hands quietly upon her knee, waiting.

"I want to talk to you," he said.

She nodded. "All right. Do."

His wrath boiled through his lips chokingly. "You ..." he stammered. "You and Brander...."

Her eyes, upon his, hardened. She said nothing; but this hardening of her eyes was like a defiance. He flung his hands above his head. "By God, you're shameless," he choked. "You're shameless.... A shameless woman.... And him.... I took him out of a hell hole.... And he takes you.... I'll break him in two with my hands."

She said nothing; he flung into an insanity of words. He cursed her unspeakably, with every evil phrase he had learned in close to thirty years of the sea. He accused her of unnamable things.... His face swelled with his fury, the veins bulged upon his forehead, his eyes were covered with a dry film. His mouth filled with saliva, that splattered with the venom of his words.... It ran down his chin, so that he brushed it away with the back of his hand.... He was uncontrolled, save in one thing. Something made him hush his voice; he whispered harshly and chokingly.... What he said could scarce have been heard in the main cabin, six feet away from them....