* * * * * That night, in the small hours, Noll screamed in a way that woke the ship; he had come out of drunken slumber, desperate with a vivid hallucination that appalled him.... He thought that Mauger was at him with a sheath knife, and that Brander was at Mauger's back. Faith and Dan'l fought to soothe him; Faith in her loose dressing-gown, her hair in its thick braid.... Dan'l had more eyes for Faith than for Noll. He had never seen her thus before; never seen her so beautiful; never seen her, he thought, so desperately to be desired.... His lips were wet at the sight of her.... Noll's terror racked and tore at the man; it seemed to rip the very flesh from his bones. When it passed, at last, and he fell asleep again, he was wasted like a corpse. Dan'l, looking at Noll and at Faith, wished Noll were a corpse indeed. XX A change was coming to pass in Faith at this time. As the strength flowed out of Noll, it seemed to flow into her. As Noll weakened, Faith was growing strong. She had never lacked a calm strength of her own; the strength of a good woman. But she was acquiring now the strength and resolution of a man. At first, this was unconscious; the spectacle of Noll's degeneration moved her by the force of contrast. But for a long time she clung to the picture of the Noll of the past, clung to the hope that the captain would become again the man she had married. And so long as she did this, she made herself a part of him, his support.... She merged herself in him, thought of herself only as his helpmate.... She had always tried to stimulate his pride and strength; she had tried to lead him to reassume the domination of the _Sally_ and all aboard her. And in the days before Noll went out to kill his whale, she thought for a time she had succeeded. But when Noll came back to her that day, exhausted by the struggle, the fire gone out of him, Faith perceived that he was a weak vessel, cracking and breaking before her eyes. Noll was gone; he was no longer a man. His hands and his heart had not the force needed to enable him to command the _Sally_, to make the voyage successful, to bring the bark safely back to port in the end. Faith saw this; but she refused to consider the chance of failure. She had married Noll when he was at the height of his apparent strength; the signs of his disintegration were not yet apparent. They had swept upon him suddenly.... But she would not have it said of him, when he was gone, that he had sailed the seas too long; that he had failed at last, and shamefully.... She had come to look upon the success of this last voyage of Noll's as a sacred charge; and when Noll's shoulders weakened, she prepared deliberately to take the burden on her own. The _Sally_ must come safely home, with filled casks for old Jonathan Felt; she must come safely home, no matter what happened to Noll--or to herself. The prosperity of the _Sally Sims_ was almost a religion to Faith....