His words failed, then, before the steady light in her eyes. She was wondering, questioning him.... She met his eyes so fairly that the soul of the man cowered and shrank. The strength of rage went from him. He drew back. "What is it, Noll?" she asked. "Why are you--angry?" He lifted a clenched hand over his head; it trembled there for an instant, then came slowly down. He wrenched open the door to the main cabin, and went out and left her standing there.... Faith watched him go; perplexity in her eyes. Dan'l joined him, and they went on deck together. XXI They came to the Solander Grounds with matters still in this wise. Brander much with the crew; Noll Wing rotting in his chair in the cabin; Faith gaining strength of soul with every day; Dan'l playing upon Noll, upon Roy, upon all those about him to his own ends.... The Solander received them roughly; they passed the tall Solander Rock and cruised to the westward, keeping it in sight. There was another whaling ship, almost hull down, north of them, and the smoke that clouded her told the _Sally_ she had her trypots going. Dan'l Tobey was handling the vessel; and he chose to work up that way. But before they were near the other craft, the masthead men sighted whales.... Spouts all about, blossoming like flowers upon the blue water. Noll had regained a little of his strength when they came upon the Grounds; he took the ship, and bade Dan'l and the other mates lower and single out a lone whale.... "They'll all be bulls, hereabouts," he said. "Big ones, too.... And we'll take one at a spell and be thankful for that...." The whale was, as Noll had predicted, a bull. Dan'l made the kill, a ridiculously easy one. The vast creature lifted a little in the water at the first iron; he swam slowly southward; but there was no fight in him when they pulled up and thrust home the lance. The lance thrusts seemed to take out of him what small spirit of resistance there had been in the beginning; and when his spout crimsoned, he lay absolutely still, and thus died.... An hour after lowering, the whale was alongside the _Sally_; a monstrous creature, not far short of the colossus Cap'n Wing had slain. He was made fast to the fluke-chain bitt, and the cutting in began forthwith.... That, too, on Noll Wing's order. "Fair weather never sticks, hereabouts," he said. "Work while there's working seas." Now the first part of cutting in a whale is to work off the head; and that is no small task. For the whale has no neck at all, unless a certain crease in his thick blubber may be called a neck. The spades of the mates, keen-edged, and mounted on long poles with which they jab downward from the cutting stage, chock into the blubber and draw a deep cut along the chosen line.... The carcass is laboriously turned, the process is repeated.... Thus on, till at last the huge mass can be torn free....