la took a single glimpse of the
shuddering, bloody, oily work of cutting in the carcass, and then she
fled to her cabin and remained there steadfastly until the long task was
done. The smoke from the bubbling try pots, and the persistent smell of
boiling blubber sickened her; and the grime that descended over
everything appalled her dainty soul. Not until the men had cleaned ship
did she go on deck again; and even then she scolded Joel for the affair
as though it were a matter for which he was wholly to blame.

"There just isn't any sense in making so much dirt," she told him. "I've
had to wash out every one of my curtains; and I can't ever get rid of
that smell."

Joel chuckled. "Aye, the smell sticks," he agreed. "But you'll be used to
it soon, Priss. You'll come to like it, I'm thinking. Any case, we'll not
be rid of it while the cruise is on."

She was so angry that she wanted to cry. "Do you actually mean, Joel
Shore, that I've got to live with that sickening, hot-oil smell for
th-three years?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes, Priss. No way out of it. It's part of the work.
Come another month, and you'll not mind at all."

She said positively: "I may not say anything, but I shall always hate
that smell."

His eyes twinkled slowly; and she stamped her foot. "If I'd known it was
going to be like this, I wouldn't have come, Joel. Now don't you laugh at
me. If there was any way to go back, I'd go. I hate it. I hate it all.
You ought not to have brought me...."

They were on the broad bench across the stern, in their cabin; and he put
his big arm about her shoulders and laughed at her till she could do no
less than laugh back at him. But--she assured herself of this--she was
angry, just the same. Nevertheless, she laughed....

Joel had put the _Nathan Ross_ on the most direct southward course,
touching neither Azores nor Cape Verdes. For it was in his mind, as he
had told Asa Worthen, to make direct for the Gilbert Islands and seek
some trace of his brother there. That had been his plan before he left
port; but the plan had become determination after a word with Aaron
Burnham, one day. Joel, resting in the cabin while old Aaron worked
there, fell to thinking of his brother, and so asked:

"Aaron, what is your belief about my brother, Mark Shore? Is he dead?"

Aaron was building, that day, the forward partition of the new cabin,
fitting his boards meticulously, and driving home each nail with hammer
strokes that seem