Mr. Ham was dead and gone. Faith was surprised to find, in the next few days, how much she missed him. The mate had been harsh, brutal to the men, ready with his fist.... Yet somehow she found in her heart a deep affection for the man. He was so amiably stupid, so stupidly good of heart. His philosophy of life had been the philosophy of blows; he believed men, like children, were best ruled for their own good by the heavy hand of a master. And he acted on that belief, with the best will in the world. But there had never been any malice in his blows; he frowned and glared and struck from principle; he was at heart a simple man, and a gentle one.... Not the stuff of a leader; never the man to take command of a masterless ship. Nevertheless, a man of a certain rude and simple strength of soul.... Faith was sorry he was gone; she felt they could have better spared another man.... Almost any other, save Noll Wing. She did not at once perceive the true nature of the change which Mr. Ham's death must bring about aboard the _Sally_. In the balancing of man and man which had made for a precarious stability there, Mr. Ham had taken a passive, but nevertheless important part. Now he was gone; the balance was disturbed. But neither Faith nor the others at once perceived this; none of them saw that Dan'l Tobey as second mate, and Dan'l Tobey as first mate, with only a step between him and the command, were very different matters.... Not even Dan'l, in the beginning.... They were all too busy, for one thing; there were the whales to be cut in--for James Tichel had killed and towed his booty back to the _Sally_ an hour after Mr. Ham died. Tichel's whale, and the one that had killed Mr. Ham, would give the whole ship work for days; feverish work, hard and engrossing. Cap'n Wing, who had leaned upon Mr. Ham in the past, perforce took charge of this work, and the strain of it wearied him. He no longer had the abounding vitality which it demanded.... It wearied him; and what with the death of the mate, and the rush of this work and his own weariness, he altogether forgot his threat to have the man, Brander, whipped in the rigging. He forgot Brander, tried to drive the men at their tasks, and eventually gave up in a stormy outbreak of impatience and left the matter in the hands of Dan'l Tobey. Dan'l went about the business of cutting in and boiling the blubber in a deep abstraction; he was considering the problem raised by the death of Mr. Ham, which none of the others--save, perhaps, Faith--had yet perceived. This problem was simple; yet it had possibilities of trouble. Mr. Ham was gone; Dan'l automatically became first officer; old James Tichel ranked as second, Willis as third.... But the place of fourth mate was left empty.... It would have to be filled. The _Sally_ could not go on about her business with one boat's crew forever idle. There would have to be a new officer.