All the Brothers Were Valiant

e resolve to hunt out Mark, and find him, and fetch him home.... The blood tie was strong on Joel; stronger than any memory of Mark's derision. And--fo

irst talk, whether they had questioned

l man, and a rat-eyed large man, and a fat man in between; all unshaven, and filthy, and drunken as owls. They'd see

ks, but he was too amiable, and he had no clamp upon his lips.... Joel did not wish the word to go abroad among the men. He was g

he Straits, and worked in, and made their westing day by day, while little Priss, wide-eyed on the deck, watched the gaunt cliffs past whos

while the trypots boiled; and day after day they loitered on good whaling grounds, when the boats were out thrice and four times between sun's rise and set. If Joel was impatient, he gave n

d because it is not always good for two people to be too much together, and because she had nothing better to do, she began to pick Joel to pieces in her thoughts, and fret at his patience and stolidity. She wished he would gro

back from the board with slow and solid satisfaction. She came to the point where she longed to scream when he did this. When they were at table in

clear. He was happy, and comfortable, and well content. Sometimes, when they were preparing for sleep, at night, in the cabin at the stern, he would relax on the cou

hat purgatory between maidenhood and wifehood in the course of which married folk find each other only human, after all. And she had not yet come to accept this condition, and to glory in it. She had always thought of Joel as a hero, a

work. She was furiously resentful of Joel's flesh-and-bloodness.... And Joel,

saw no misty spout against the wide blue of the sea, no glistening black body lying awash among the waves. And the Nathan Ross, wit

eded fresh foodstuffs. Joel planned to touch at the first land that

teapot that boils over. The storm came without warning, and--so far as Joel could see--without provocation. She was sick, she sai

ng impulses to which husbands fall victim at such moments, he decided to wait and surprise her. So, instead

. As a matter of fact, she was hating him for having laughed at

lips; and he was faintly hurt at this. But he only said cheer

though he were trying to swallow a large and hot potato while he uttered t

d and red. Priss burst into tears, stamped her foot, called him names she did not mean,

rstand; and he went to his bun

a boat came out from shore and ran alongside, and Ma