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THE ICE PILOT
BY HENRY LEVERAGE
FRONTISPIECE BY
RUDOLPH TANDLER
GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY STREET AND SMITH CORPORATION
DEDICATED TO
THE CAPTAIN OF THE _KARLUK_
SEASON 1897-8
[Illustration: _The floes through which Stirling guided the ship became
larger and higher_]
CONTENTS
- CHAPTER I--THE COAST OF BARBARY
- CHAPTER II--ON A MAN'S SEA
- CHAPTER III--OVER THE QUARTER-DECK
- CHAPTER IV--ON THE SPARKLING SEA
- CHAPTER V--INTO A PURPLE TWILIGHT
- CHAPTER VI--BY THE GREAT-CIRCLE ROUTE
- CHAPTER VII--DRIFTERS AND DERELICTS
- CHAPTER VIII--ON A LOWER BUNK
- CHAPTER IX--THE POLAR BARRIER
- CHAPTER X--TO THE LAST DAY
- CHAPTER XI--BENEATH THE SURFACE
- CHAPTER XII--THE MANNER OF MAN
- CHAPTER XIII--INTO THE ICE
- CHAPTER XIV--A WHISPERED WARNING
- CHAPTER XV--OUT OF THE PORTHOLE
- CHAPTER XVI--FROM HIS POCKET
- CHAPTER XVII--INTO FORBIDDEN WATERS
- CHAPTER XVIII--WITH THE SPEED OF WIND
- CHAPTER XIX--A TOAST FROM MARR
- CHAPTER XX--THE MOVING SHADOWS
- CHAPTER XXI--THROUGH THE PORTHOLE
- CHAPTER XXII--ALONE IN THE CABIN
- CHAPTER XXIII--OVER THE STERN
- CHAPTER XXIV--BEFORE THE WHEEL
- CHAPTER XXV--IN THE GRIP OF THE UNKNOWN
- CHAPTER XXVI--IN THE SUDDEN DARKNESS
- CHAPTER XXVII--IN THE PIT
- CHAPTER XXVIII--THE THIRD DOOR
- CHAPTER XXIX--TO SEE IT THROUGH
- CHAPTER XXX--IN SWIFT SALUTE
- CHAPTER XXXI--DANGER AND DOUBT
- CHAPTER XXXII--TO THE LAST DAY
- CHAPTER XXXIII--A GRIM WARNING
- CHAPTER XXXIV--THROUGH THE DRIVING SNOW
- CHAPTER XXXV--A MATTER OF MINUTES
- CHAPTER XXXVI--ACROSS THE CABIN
- CHAPTER XXXVII--THE CALLING BEACON
CHAPTER I--THE COAST OF BARBARY
It was raining in San Francisco.
Over that Bagdad of the West a thin drizzling mist swept like some fine
seiner's net; over the Bay a fog hung.
A man stood alone on the crest of Telegraph Hill. Below him the city
stretched with its square-checked habitations; its long, blurred lanes
of lights; its trolley cars creeping like glow-worms up and down the
slippery inclines.
That evening the man had watched the sun go down in yellow splendour. He
had seen the shadow of night chase the sunlight in a mad frolic beyond
the edge of the world. He had noted--for his eyes were sharp--the
fore-topsail of a windjammer cut a square nick out of the horizon, and
come like a scared white thing through the Golden Gate.
Directly below the man a house, which was perched on the declivity,
seemed to burst with drunken mirth and laughter. A woman's voice swung
in tune with a tinkling piano. She sang an old chantey that whalers
know:
"'Rah for the grog--
The jolly, jolly grog.
'Rah for the grog and tobacco.
We've spent all our tin with the ladies, drinking gin,
And across the briny ocean we must wan--der----"
The man shrugged his shoulders, clinked two silver coins together, and
descended the hill to the Blubber Room, from whence the song had come.
The piano drummed out a noisy welcome when he opened and closed the
door.
He took a seat at a table, removed his cap from his gray-sprinkled head,
leaned back, and looked around the smoky interior of the Blubber Room.
The figures of old salts, crimps, half-pay officers, and one
square-jawed sailor loomed through the fetid air. A woman with carmined
lips and a thin blue neck stood by a youth who played the piano.
It was all familiar to Stirling--known from the Clyde to the Golden Horn
as Horace Stirling, the Ice Pilot. He had been in such dives before. He
knew Number Nine, Yokohama, and the Silver Dollar at Manila.
Stirling had struck hard luck, chicken farming over Oakland way. His
chickens died as sailors die of scurvy at Herschel Island, and he wanted
to quit the shore.
The sea and the Arctic called, and he had little money left. There was a
chance for adventure in the Blubber Room that night; rumour had it that
a ship was outfitting for a passage to East Cape, Siberia, and the
unknown land around the Pole.
Stirling possessed a countenance stamped with the seal of misfortune--a
face with which destiny loves to toy, the face of a rover and a
castaway, yet withal, a strong face which would remain strong to the
very end.
His eyes were dark brown and wide-set. His nose was long and divided
full; round cheeks blood-veined to a purplish tinge that spoke not only
of wind and weather, of the sea and brine, but also of the lees and
dregs of a wanderer's life.
The figure of him, sitting at the table, seemed blocked from sturdy oak.
He eyed the patrons of the Blubber Room and concluded that the adventure
he sought for was far away from that noisy, smoke-filled dive. There was
but one occupant who looked capable of a desperate enterprise--the
sailor--and this man sat hunched in a chair as if he had been drinking
heavily of temperance-time alcohol.
Stirling studied the sailor's face and found lines in it which were
slightly familiar. It brought to his mind the Revenue Service and a
second lieutenant whom he had met off the Little Diomede Island in
Bering Strait.
Turning from his scrutiny of the sailor, Stirling looked at the door of
the Blubber Room through which two men stepped who would have attracted
attention anywhere.
These men, glistening from the rain, took seats at a table and called
for a bottle of light wine. One man was a Yankee, by his nasal
undertones and tobacco-stained goatee. The other man was half the weight
of the first, thin, alert, with a well-trimmed Vandyke beard over which
glittered a pair of eyes that resembled gimlets in their pointed
intensity.
Upon both of these men lay the badge of the sea--in their gestures,
their pea-jackets, and their peculiar habit of always leaning against
something, which is acquired on decks of ships.
Stirling studied these men, watched them drink the wine, and saw that
they had fallen under the hidden observation of the sailor who resembled
a second lieutenant of the Revenue Service.
The Ice Pilot sensed adventure. He also ordered a bottle of light wine,
and paid for it with his last dollar. He sipped the liquid slowly,
pretended to be interested in the woman at the piano, and waited for
something to happen.
He had not long to wait.
The two seamen rose from their table, tossed down coins, glanced
meaningly toward the woman at the piano and the waiter who had served
them wine, and went out from the Blubber Room.
Stirling looked at the sailor, who half-lifted himself from his chair,
thought better of the action, dropped back, thrust his elbows on the
table, and buried his face in his palms.
The woman's song rose and fell in the heated air, while the lamps
flickered and almost went out. The piano's tinkling notes settled to a
shrill tune that was a signal.
There followed swifter than Stirling could make note of the events, an
oath from the waiter, a curse upon somebody, a loud banging of the
piano, and a woman's penetrating scream.
A chair, a cuspidor, and part of a table hurtled across the Blubber
Room; bottles struck the walls; the light went out when the lamps fell
in a thousand pieces to the floor.
Stirling overturned his table, stumbled through the gloom, tripped over
a body, went down on all fours, and crawled to the door. He raised
himself and attempted to turn the knob, but it would not budge. He heard
behind him the shrieks of the woman and the thud of many blows, then,
after a minute's uproar, a match was lighted, shielded in a red palm,
and its rays directed downward to the sawdust floor.
The Ice Pilot felt his heart throb in his staunch body. The woman, who
had stood by the piano, lay face upward with the hilt of a seaman's
knife protruding from her breast; carmine stained her neck and waist.
"Watch th' door an' windows!" a seaman cried. "Somebody's gone an'
croaked Thedessa."
Accusing eyes glowed in the match's yellow light, and the Ice Pilot felt
that he was the centre of suspicion. A hand was raised and a long finger
pointed toward him.
He waited until someone lighted the wick of a smashed lamp, then
stepping from the locked door he went to the woman and knelt by her
side. Rising, he said, "I didn't kill her. I think the piano-player
did."
"Maybe she ain't dead," said a voice that Stirling recognized as coming
from the sailor.
The waiter took off his apron, closed one eye craftily, and, after a
brutal laugh and a sharp glance around the circle of seaman, exclaimed:
"Aw, nobody killed her-she just fell on th' knife!"
Stirling sought for the piano-player who had vanished. He square-set his
shoulders, clenched his fists, and cleared his throat.
"I'll go for the police," he said.
The waiter and a seaman grasped his sturdy arms. "Hol' on," they urged.
"Why should I hold on?"
The waiter eyed the woman on the floor.
"She's dead. Nobody knows who killed her. Let's all help carry th' body
out to Meigg's Wharf an' set her afloat."
Stirling shook his head. He heard behind him the soft step of the
piano-player who came from a door set near the piano.
"I'll swing for it," he said to the Ice Pilot, a whine in his voice.
"Help me out of th' mess, matey. Let's set Thedessa adrift--she always
wanted to float out to sea that way."
Stirling felt an urging glance from the sailor who resembled the
second-lieutenant. He moved to this man's side and was going to question
him when the wick of the lamp sputtered and went out.
Another wick was lighted and this was thrust in the mouth of a wine
bottle, where it flared like a torch at sea.
"What d'ye say?" questioned the piano-player. "What does everybody say?
Th' police will pinch us all for th' murder an' keep us in jail for
weeks."
"You knifed that woman!" declared Stirling.
The piano-player blinked his pale lashes, then went to the door, drew a
key from his pocket, and threw back the bolt of the lock. He looked out
into the vale of mist and fog that stretched from Telegraph Hill to the
waters of the Bay.
"Who'll help me carry Thedessa?" he queried.
A crimp, the waiter, and one or two seamen offered their services.
Stirling hesitated, but again he felt the urge from the
second-lieutenant, and agreed by nodding his head.
The piano-player, who knew the path, led the way with the woman's feet
under his arm, the waiter and a seaman supporting Thedessa's head.
Stirling and the sailor brought up the rear.
"My name is Eagan," said the sailor. "We'll go along and see what
happens. It's th' best way out of a nasty jam."
"Were you in the Bering Strait three seasons ago?"
Eagan shook his head, clutched Stirling's arm, and guided him after the
trio who had carried the woman out upon Meigg's Wharf and were lowering
her into a Whitehall boat.
"No," he said to Stirling. "But I got something to say to you--after
awhile. Something important."
The Ice Pilot hesitated on the stringer-piece of the wharf and looked
toward the fog-covered Bay, but again Eagan guided him on. They seized
hold of a painter that was hitched to a cleat, descended to the
Whitehall boat, and cast loose from the wharf.
Thedessa lay in the stern of the boat where the piano-player and waiter
sat with their heads close together. A seaman rowed skilfully, and the
sharp-prowed boat cut through the short waves, swung, steadied, and made
toward a dark mass on the surface of San Francisco Bay.
Stirling suddenly felt water around his boots. He glanced down and
lifted his feet. He heard a cry from the piano-player.
"We're sinking! There's no plug in this boat!"
Eagan attempted to find the plug-hole. He rose with his hands dripping
bilge muck. The man at the oars dug the blades deep into the bay, bent
his back, and dug again as if his life were at stake.
Stirling climbed into the bow of the boat, stared through the fog, and
heard a ship's bell striking. He motioned for the oarsman to row in that
direction, and the light craft steadied upon the dark mass.
Reaching upward, the Ice Pilot warded off the boat and grasped a
dangling line that ran over a ship's rail at the waist. He nudged Eagan
and went hand-over-hand upward until one palm hooked the rail, then he
turned his head and looked at the boat.
The piano-player, the waiter, and the woman--all three very much
alive--were standing on the thwarts. Eagan and the other seamen had
found lines up which they were climbing.
Stirling saw the woman draw a bent knife from her breast, toss it
overboard, and wring the water from her skirts.
He heard her mocking song as the Whitehall boat merged in the fog, and
finally was gone back toward Meigg's Wharf and the Blubber Room:
"It's 'rah for th' grog--
Th' jolly, jolly grog!
It's 'rah for th' grog an' tobacco!
For you've spent all your tin with th' ladies, drinkin' gin,
An' across th' brimy ocean you must wan--der----"