The continual storms of the Solander irked him; the racking work of whaling, when it was necessary to run to port with each kill, fretted the flesh from his bones. They lost a whale one day, in a sudden squall that developed into a gale and swept them far to the southward; and when the weather moderated, and Dan'l Tobey started to work back to the Grounds again, Noll would have none of it.
"Set your course t'the east'ard," he commanded. "I'm fed up with the Solander. We'll hit the islands again...."
Dan'l protested that there was nowhere such whaling as the Solander offered; but Noll would not be persuaded. He resented the attempt to argue with him. "No, by God," he swore. "A pity if a man can't have his way. Hell with the Solander, Dan'l. I'm sick o' storms, and cold. Get north t'where it's warm again...."
So they did as he insisted, and ran into slack times once more. The men at first exulted in their new leisure; they were well enough content to kill a whale and loaf a week before another kill. Then they began to be impatient with inaction; discontent arose among them. They remembered the ambergris; and their talk was that they need stay out no longer, that the voyage was already a success, that they had a right to expect to head for home.
Brander, ever among them as he had promised himself he would be, worked against this discontent. He tried to hearten them; they gave him half attention, and some measure of liking.... But their sulking held and grew upon them.
There was as much ill feeling aft as forward. Roy, released from his irons long before, had not spoken to Faith since his release. He hated his sister with that hatred which sometimes arises between blood kin, and which is more violent than any other. Let lovers quarrel; let brothers clash; let son and father, or mother and daughter, or brother and sister go asunder, and there is no bitterness to equal the bitterness between them. It is as though the strength of their former affection served to intensify their hate. It is like the hatred of a woman scorned; she is able to hate the more, because she once has loved.
Roy hated Faith; and with the ingenuity of youth, he found out ways to torment her. He perceived that Faith must always love him, he perceived that her thoughts hovered over him as do the thoughts of a mother; and he took pleasure in agonizing her with his own misdeeds. He lied for the pleasure of lying; he swore roundly; and once, under Dan'l's gentle guidance, he pilfered rum and drank himself into the likeness of a beast. When Faith chided him for that, he told her with drunken good nature that she was to blame; that she had driven him to it. Faith's sense of justice was strong; she was too level of head to condemn herself; nevertheless, she was made miserable by what the boy had done.... Yet she led Noll to punish him for this theft, more sternly than before; and afterward, she had Roy sent forward to take his place among the men, and the cabin was forbidden ground to him thereafter.