Noll looked again, and Brander leveled his glass once more. The _Sally_ was making that way, now; the speck was almost dead ahead of them, far on the sea. Tiny bits of white were stirring over the black thing, like bits of paper in the wind.... Noll asked at last: "What do you make of it, Mr. Brander? A boat.... Or a derelict...." "I make it a dead whale," said Brander. "No whale," Noll argued. "Rides too high." "It will be rotten," Brander insisted. "Swollen.... Full of putrid gas." They watched a while longer, neither speaking. The light wind that urged them on was failing; the _Sally_ slackened her pace, bit by bit; but her own momentum and some casual drift of the surface water still sent her toward the floating speck. It bulked larger in their glasses. They were within a mile of it before Noll Wing shut his glass. "Aye, dead whale," he said disgustedly, and began to descend from the rigging. Brander dropped lightly after him. Noll stumped past the men at their stations by the boats till he came to Dan'l Tobey. "Dead whale," he told Dan'l. "Let it be." Brander, at Noll's heels, asked: "Do we lower?" Noll shook his head. "No," he said sharply. The disappointment, coming on the heels of the hope that had been roused, had made him fretful and angry. Brander said: "I was thinking...." Noll turned on him querulously. "Some ships have truck with carrion and dog meat," he snarled. "Not the _Sally_. I'll not play buzzard." Brander smiled. "It's not pleasant, I know.... But, aboard the _Thomas Morgan_, we got a bit of ambergris out of such a whale.... This one was lean, you saw.... It died of a sickness. That's the kind...." Dan'l Tobey said, with a grin: "A man'd think you like the smell of it, Brander." "Ambergris is fool's talk," Noll growled. "I've heard tell of it for thirty year, and never saw a lump bigger than a man's thumb. Fool's talk, Mr. Brander. Let be...." He turned away; and Brander and Dan'l stood together, watching as the _Sally_ drifted nearer and nearer the dead whale. They could see the feasting sea birds hovering; they caught once or twice the flash of a leaping body as sharks tore at the carcass. Here and there the blubber showed white where great chunks had been ripped away. They watched, and drifted nearer; and so there came to them presently the smell of it. An unspeakable smell.... The men caught it first, in the bow; Dan'l and Brander heard their first cries of disgust before the slowly drifting air brought them the odor. But five minutes later, it had engulfed the ship, penetrated even into the cabin. Noll got it; he stuck his head up out of the companion and bellowed: "Mr. Tobey, get the _Sally_ out o' range of that." Dan'l said: "Not a breath of wind, sir." He went toward the companion, as Noll stepped out on deck; and he grinned with malicious inspiration, "Mr. Brander likes the smell of it, sir.... Why not send him off to tow it out of range?"