“He trapped a little sea bird once, and made a tiny cage for it, and left it for her to find; and when the girl discovered it, she cried out with pity for the captive, and ran on deck with the cage and set the little creature free. Eric Scarf saw her, and she knew it was he who had done it, and pitied him.
“‘I’m really grateful,’ she said, smiling very gently at the big man, ‘but he is so unhappy in a cage.’
“Eric tried to speak, and saw one of the men by the tryworks grinning at him; so he went forward and drove the man with blows to the knight’s heads, and Joan scorned him for days thereafter.
“I’ve seen a cock pa’tridge ruffle his feathers and beat and drum with his wings, all glory and strength and vigor in his wooing; and no doubt the hen liked it. But if the pa’tridge had tried such measures in the courting of a singing thrush, he would only have frighted and dismayed her whom he sought to please. It was so with Eric. His courting would have pleased some women; Joan it but disgusted and disturbed.
“‘Eric Scarf and I were closer friends than you would think; and I knew the big, strong man to be as shy and as easy to take hurt as a child. But it was his way when he was hurt or shamed to strike out at the nearest, and so to those without understanding he seemed a mere bully, cruel and exultant in his strength.
“Lucky for us on the Pownal, Scarf delighted in the whaling. There was no other task in the world so fitted to the man. So strong he was that nothing short of a whale could give him the fierce joy of battle which soothed him. He drove his men as he drove himself, and they either broke under it or became hard-bitten and enduring hands, fit to match him. His boat was always first away; and he would strike and kill one whale and then another while other officers were content with a single catch. I’ve known him to do what few attempt: to lower at night when moonlight revealed a spout, and make his kill, and tow the fish to the ship by dawn. Cap’n Tobbey never interfered with Eric, for the mate was too valuable; and when the mate’s watch was on deck, he would lower and kill without ever calling the Old Man from his cabin at all.
“I had heard of Scarf before this v’y’ge, but never watched him work before; and many a time I found myself biting my lip and holding the breath in my chest at the daring of him. In any weather short of a gale, he would lower; and once two boats were swamped in lowering before he took the third mate’s and got away—and got the whale.