Her lips set faintly. Love Brander though she did, there was no place for him in her life. Her life was Noll; her life belonged to Noll. Noll was failing; his flesh might live, but his soul was dead and his strength was gone. His tasks fell upon her. Quite simply, in that moment, Faith promised herself that whatever happened, the _Sally Sims_ should come safe home again; that no man should ever say Noll Wing had failed in the end; that no man should ever make a jest of Noll's old renown. And if Noll could not manage these things for himself, she would.... She began, suddenly, to cry; she locked herself in her cabin and wept bitterly for hours.... But afterward, bathing her eyes, freshening herself to meet Noll's eyes, she looked into the mirror, and smiled and lifted her head. "You can do it, Faith," she told herself. "You can do it, full as well as he." And then, more seriously: "You must, Faith Wing. You must bring the _Sally_ home." When she stepped out into the after cabin, she saw the revolver still on the floor where Noll had left it. She picked it up to return it to its proper drawer.... But on second thought, she changed her mind, and took it and hid it in her bunk. XXV A curious lull settled down upon the _Sally Sims_ during the days after Noll's open accusation of Faith, and his collapse before her steady courage. There was an apathy in the air; they saw few whales, lowered for them without zeal, missed more than one that should have been killed.... There was a silence upon the ship, like the hush of listening men who wait to hear an expected call. This paralysis gripped every soul aboard--save Noll Wing alone. Noll, in those last days, stalked his deck like a parody of the man he once had been. Faith had put a fictitious courage in the man; he thought himself once more the master, as in the past. His heels pounded the planks; his head was high; his voice roared.... But there was a tremor in his stride; there was a trembling about the poise of him; there was a cracking quaver in his voice. He was like a child who plays at being a man.... They humored him; the men and the mates seemed to enter into a conspiracy to humor him. They leaped to his bidding; they shrank from his curses as though desperate with fear.... And Noll was so delighted with all this that he was perpetually good-natured, jovial.... He was, of course, drinking heavily and steadily; but the drink seemed to hearten him and give him strength. Certainly it made him lenient; for on three occasions when the men found a bottle, forward, and befuddled themselves with it, Noll only laughed as though at a capital jest. Noll laughed.... But Faith wondered and was distressed and watched to see how the liquor was being stolen. She was disturbed and alarmed; but Noll laughed at her fears. "A little of it never hurt a man," he told her boastfully. "Look at me, to see that. Let be, Faith. Let be."