The Sea Bride Part 22

He was not seeking Faith; but he came upon her there, in the main cabin.

She was at the table, with a book, and paper and pen; and he stopped to look over her shoulder, and saw that she was making calculations....

Lat.i.tude and longitude.... He asked: "What are you doing?"

She looked up at him. "Studying navigation, Roy. Don't you want to?"

He stared at her. "What are you doing it for?"

"Because I want to. Besides.... It's a good thing to be able to find out where you are, on a world as big as this.... Don't you think?"

He flung himself into a chair across from her. "Look here, Faith.... Why do you keep looking at Brander? All the time?"

Faith was startled; she was startled not so much at what Roy said, as at what his words revealed to her. Nevertheless her voice was steady and quiet as she asked: "What do you mean, Roy?"

"The way you look at Brander. He's not fit for you to talk to.... To look at.... Anything. He's not fit to be around you...."

She laughed at him. "How do I look at Mr. Brander, Roy?" she asked.

"Why--like...." Roy groped for words; Faith was suddenly afraid of what he might say. She interrupted him.

"Don't be silly, Roy. Go away.... Don't bother me.... I'm busy with this, Roy."

He said: "You...." But she bent over her book; she paid him no attention for a moment. Roy, sitting opposite, studied the top of her head, and thought.... There was an expression in his eyes as though he were trying to remember something familiar that evaded him. In the silence, they could hear Cap'n Wing snoring in his cabin; they could hear old Tichel stir in his bunk at the other side of the s.h.i.+p; they could hear the m.u.f.fled murmur of the voices of the harpooners, in the steerage. And all about them the timbers that were the fabric of the _Sally_ creaked and groaned as they yielded to the tug of the seas. Roy still stared with a puzzled frown at the top of Faith's brown head.... Faith did not look up from her book....

Suddenly Roy cried, in a low voice: "Faith! I know...." And, all in a burst: "You look at Brander just like you used to look at Noll Wing when we were kids...."

Faith went white; and she rose to her feet so swiftly that the book was overturned on the table, the loose sheets of paper fluttered, the pen rolled across to the edge of the table and fell and stuck on its point in the cabin floor....

With a motion swift as light, forgetting book and paper and pen, Faith slipped across, into the after cabin. She shut the door in Roy's face, and he heard her slip the catch upon it.

Roy stared at the closed door; then he went abstractedly around the table and pulled the pen loose from the floor. The steel point was twisted, spoiled.

XVIII

The _Sally_ came, abruptly, into a sea that was full of whales. At nightfall they had not smelled oil for weeks; at dawn there were spouts on three quarters of the horizon; and thereafter for more than a month there were never three successive days when they did not sight whales.

This turn of the luck brought three things to pa.s.s: Roy Kilcup had his first chance in the boats during the chase; Brander killed his first whale as an officer of the _Sally_; and Noll Wing killed the last cachalot that was ever to feel his lance.

Dan'l Tobey had promised Roy, at the time when Brander was promoted to be mate, that he would give the boy a chance in his boat. He put Roy on the after thwart, under his own eye, and Roy leaned to the oar and pulled with all his might, and bit his lip to hold back the sobbing of his breath. The boy came of whaling stock; his father and his father's father had been men of the sea. And he did not turn white when the boat's bow slid at last alongside a slumbering black ma.s.s, and the keen harpoons chocked home.

That first experience of Roy's was a mild one. The whale, a fairish bull, showed no fight whatever. He took the irons as a baby takes soothing sirup; and he lay still while they pulled alongside and prodded him with a lance. At the last, when his spout was a crimson fountain, he gave one gigantic forward leap; but he was dead not ten fathoms from the spot where he lay when the first harpoon went home; and thereafter there was only the long toil of towing the monster back to the s.h.i.+p for the cutting in.

A small affair, without excitement; yet big for Roy. It worked a change in the boy. He came back to the s.h.i.+p no longer a boy, but the makings of a man. He spoke loftily to Faith; and he brushed shoulders with the men on equal terms and was proud to do so, altogether forgetting the days when he had liked to think himself their superior, and to order them around. Dan'l catered to the new mood in the boy; he told Cap'n Wing in Roy's hearing that the youngster would make a whaleman.... That he had never seen any one so cool at the striking of his first whale.... Roy swelled visibly.

Brander's initiation as an officer of the _Sally_ came at the same time; and a bit of luck made it possible for the fourth mate to prove his mettle. When they sighted spouts in three quarters, that morning, the mate had chosen to go after a lone bull; old Tichel and Brander attacked a small pod to the eastward; and Willis c.o.x went north to try for a fish there.

Brander gave Tichel right of way, since the old man was his superior officer; and they came upon the pod with a matter of seconds to choose between them. The whales were disappointingly small; nevertheless Tichel attacked the largest, and Brander took the one that fell to him. His irons went home a moment after Tichel's; his whale leaped into the first blind struggle, not fleeing, but fighting to shake off the iron.

Now it is customary, among whalemen, to wait till this first flurry has pa.s.sed, to allow the whale to run out his own strength, and then to pull in for the finis.h.i.+ng stroke. But Brander was ambitious; the whale was small.... He changed places with Loum, and shouted orders to his men to haul in the loose coils of line that had been thrown over with the irons. The whale was circling, rolling, striking with its flukes; it had not seen them, gave them no heed, but the very blindness of its struggles made them a greater menace.

They drew in on the whale; and Loum at the steering oar swung Brander against the monster's flank. Brander got home his lance in three thrusts before they were forced to draw clear to avoid the whale's renewed struggles. But those three were enough; the spout crimsoned; he loosed and backed away from the final flurry, and the whale was dead ten minutes from the time when the first iron went home.

That was exploit enough to prove Brander's ability; his quick kill marked him as a man who knew his job. He could have afforded to be content; but when his whale was fin out, and he looked around, he was in time to see trouble come upon James Tichel.

The whale Tichel struck had sounded; and just after Brander killed, it breached before his eyes, under the very bows of Tichel's boat. Brander saw the black column of its body rise up and up from the sea; it seemed to ascend endlessly.... Then toppled, and slowly fell, and struck the water so resoundingly that for a moment the whale and Tichel's boat were hidden alike. Tichel was dodging desperately to get clear; but the wallowing whale rolled toward him, over him, smothering his craft....

Brander, when the tossing and tormented water quieted, saw the bobbing heads of the men, and the boat just awash, and the gear floating all around....

The whale showed no immediate disposition to run; it was rolling in a frenzy, bending double as though to tear at its own wounds.... Brander stuck a marking waif in his own whale, drove his men to their oars, cut across to see that Tichel and the others were kept afloat by the boat, and then managed to pick up one of the floating tubs of line, to which the whale was still attached. The rest was easy enough; the whale fought its strength away, and Brander made his kill.

Willis c.o.x had failed to get fast; the whales he sought to attack took fright as he approached them, and his game got away with a white slash across the blubber where Long Jim's desperate cast of the harpoon had gone wild. So Willis rowed to join Brander, and picked up Tichel and his men, and took their boat and Tichel's whale which Brander had killed, in tow. Brander took the other; they worked back to the _Sally_. When they got back to the s.h.i.+p, Noll Wing clapped Brander on the shoulder and applauded him. The excitement of the sudden chase, after the weeks of idling, had put life into Noll. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes were s.h.i.+ning; he had the look of his old self once more....

Two whales at a time is as much as any whaler cares to handle; the _Sally_ had three. A blow of any violence would have made it impossible for them to cut in even one of the carca.s.ses before the steady heat of the southern seas rendered them unfit; but no squall came. The luck of the _Sally_ had turned, and turned in earnest. The men welcomed the hard work after their long idleness; they toiled at the windla.s.s and the gangway with the heartiest will. They raised chants as they walked the blanket pieces up to the main head or slacked them down the deck to be cut and stowed in the blubber room below the main hatch. The intoxication of the toil took possession of them; they went at it singing and exultant and afire; and even Noll caught the spirit of the day from them. Youth flooded back into the man; his shoulders straightened; his chest seemed to swell before their eyes. Faith, watching him, thought he was like the man she had loved.... She was, for a time, very happy....

The fever of it got into Noll's blood; and when they killed another whale the third day after, he swore that at the next chance he would himself lower for the chase. He fed on the thought.... Faith, fearful for him, ventured to protest; her first thought was ever that on Noll's safety depended the safety of the _Sally_, that Noll's first duty was to bring the _Sally Sims_ safely home again. She told Noll this; told him his place was with the s.h.i.+p.

"The _Sally_ is your charge," she said. "You ought not to risk yourself.... Take chances...."

He laughed at her tempestuously. "By G.o.d," he cried, "I was never a man to send men where I was afeared to go. So let be, Faith. You coddle me like a child; and I am not a child at all. Let be."

Faith surrendered helplessly; but she hoped he would forget, would not keep his word. He might have forgotten as she hoped; he was sinking back into his old la.s.situde when the masthead men sighted the next whale; but Dan'l sought Noll out and said anxiously:

"Best think better of it, sir. This looks like a big whale; a hard customer."

Noll had so nearly forgotten that he asked: "Think better of what, man?"

Dan'l smiled, as though he were pleased. "I thought you meant to lower,"

he said. "You do well to change your mind. Stay aboard here; leave us to handle him."

Which was like a goad to Noll, as Dan'l must have known it would be. The captain laughed angrily, and thrust Dan'l aside, and took the mate's own boat with Roy on the after thwart, and lowered. Faith was anxious; she found chance to say to Brander, as the other boats were striking the water: "Look after him, Mr. Brander." And Brander nodded rea.s.suringly.

Dan'l climbed into the rigging to watch the battle; he scarce took his gla.s.s from his eye. What he hoped for, whether he thought chance and the whale might wipe Noll from his path, only Dan'l knew.

This whale, as it chanced, was sighted at early morning; and this was as well. A big bull, the creature lay quietly, just awash, while the captain's boat came upon it from behind. He stirred not at all till Noll Wing swung hard on the long steering oar and brought them in against the black side and bellowed to Silva:

"Let go! Let go the irons!"

Silva knew his work as well as any man; and he got both harpoons home to the hitches, and threw the line clear as the bull leaped bodily forward and upward, half out of the water, and whirled in a smothering turmoil of spray and tortured foam to escape the blades that bit him. Noll swung them out of his way, shouted to Silva:

"Aft, now! Let me be at him, man...."

And Silva came stumbling back across the thwarts to take the steering oar, while Noll went forward and chose his lance and braced himself in the bow.

The whale, his first torment dulled, had stopped his struggle and lay still, swinging slowly around in the water. It was as though he looked about to discover what it was that had attacked him; and old Tichel--the other boats were standing by in a half circle about Noll and the whale--bawled across the water:

"'Ware, sir. He's looking for you."