Before that day was gone, they had half her load out of the _Sally_; and at full tide that night, with every hand tugging at a line or breasting a capstan bar, they hauled her off. She slid an inch, two inches, four.... She moved a foot, three feet.... They freed her, by sheer power of their determination that she must come free. They dragged her full ten feet before the suction of the sand beneath her keel began to slack, and ten feet more before she floated free.... Then the boats lowered, and towed her safe off shore, and anchored her there. After that, three days to get the casks inboard again and stowed below. Three days in which Dan'l Tobey passed from suffering to delirium. Brander had tended his wound as best he could; but the bone was splintered and the flesh was shattered, and there came an hour when the flesh about the wound turned green and black. It gave off a horrible fetid odor of decay. Brander told Faith: "He's got to lose either leg or life." She did not ask him if he were sure; she knew him well enough, now, never to doubt him again. But Dan'l, in an interval of lucidity, had heard; and he croaked: "Take it off, Brander. Take it off. Get the ax, man." Brander bent over the man. "I'll do my best for you." Dan'l grinned with the old jeer in his eyes. "Aye, I've no doubt, Mr. Brander. Go at it, man." They had not so much as a vial of morphia to deaden the pain; but Dan'l slumped into delirium at the first stroke of the knife Brander had whetted to a razor keenness. His body twitched in the grip of Willis Cox and Loum.... Faith helped Brander tie the arteries; Roy stood by to give what aid he could.... When it was done, Faith said the _Sally_ would lie at anchor till Dan'l died or mended; and in two weeks Brander told her the man would live. She nodded. "Then we'll go out and fill our casks," she said, "and then for home." Brander looked at her with shining eyes. "Aye, fill our casks," he agreed, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to stick to that task till it was done. They put to sea. Dan'l was going to live; but the man was broken. He was not to quit his bunk through the months of the homeward cruise; he was wasted by the fury of his own passions, by the shock of his crippling injury.... He had aged; there was no longer any strength in the man. So old Tichel came into his own at last; he became the titular master of the ship, and Faith was content to let him hold the reins, so long as he did as she desired. Willis Cox yielded precedence to Brander; Brander was mate. When they sighted whales, all three of them lowered, while Faith kept ship. Their work had been nearly done before Noll died; they lacked less than a dozen whales to fill. Young Roy, to his vast content, was allowed to take out a boat and kill one of that last dozen, while Brander in his boat lay watchfully by.