The pall which lay around the _Pole Star_ was like an ultramarine depth.
The narrow circle of visible waters rose and fell sullenly, while aloft
the taper spars merged into the mist. Now and then a grinding jerk of
the anchor chain sent a vibrating shudder from stem to jack staff. Below
the holystoned decks the watch snored, unaware that the tide hung at its
flood and that a wan yellow sun was rising over the Coast Range like a
paper lantern in a summer's garden.
Stirling moved restlessly, his eyes opened like a quiet child's, and he
surveyed his cabin. The events of the night and the early morning rushed
back to him, and he blinked as he caught a reflection of his face in a
white-bordered mirror at the head of the bunk.
He sprang to the deck, ducked his head in a basin, tested the taps, then
dried himself with a thick towel. Staring about, he found his clothes
hanging from hooks on the ship's sheathing. Donning the clothes, he
opened the door and strode out into an alleyway which led to the waist
of the ship. He lifted his eyes to the mist as he emerged upon the damp
planks and sniffed the morning air.
"Howdy!" exclaimed Cushner from a position at the rail. "About time
you're risin'. We're going to yank the mudhook up as soon as Marr gives
the order."
Stirling dropped his eyes and stepped to the mate's side. Staring over
the rail, he raised his finger, sniffed for a second time, then
declared: "She'll be clear by noon. This fog is light."
Cushner led the way forward to the ornate forecastle and Stirling
glanced down through the open booby hatch, to where a row of bunks lined
each side of the ship. In these bunks seamen slept with their arms over
their faces and their legs extended. A molasses barrel was lashed to the
heel of the foremast, and on top of this barrel stood a large pan of
white bread. The entire forecastle struck Stirling as far too clean and
too large for a whaler's. It was more like an expensive yacht's.
"Them's picked men!" said Cushner. "Some has been picked from the gutter
and some from the boarding houses. I guess I'll wake them. It's time for
both watches on deck."
The second mate lifted a belaying pin from the pinrail and pounded upon
the deck like a policeman pounds on the pavement. "Rise and shine,
lads!" he shouted, leaning over the companion's coaming. "We've got to
pay Paddy Doyle for his boots. All out!"
Cushner listened and then repeated his tapping. "All hands on deck!" he
called. "Step lively now, men! It's five bells an' th' tide is turning!"
Stirling heard protests from the sleepy crew; shoes flew across the
forecastle, pans banged, growls and feeble protests rose as the two
watches gathered together their clothes and attempted to dress in the
dark.
"Coffee they get," said Cushner. "Coffee and eggs and plum duff and
white bread and bully beef. They're lucky. In my day we chewed hardtack
and drank bilge water. Whaling has changed!"
Stirling nodded, and raised his eyes to the rigging of the _Pole Star_,
where spar varnish glistened from yards and masts, and snow-white canvas
looped downward like lingerie on clotheslines. The running rigging was
of new hemp. It all struck him as a dream as he turned and strode to the
rail by the port-anchor davit.
"See here," he said to Cushner. "I doubt if there's a finer sea boat
afloat, but how about the ice? She's sheathed, but with wood. She ought
to have a steel plate forward."
The big second mate grinned. "She's a good ice ship, Stirling," he said,
leaning over the rail and pointing downward. "That's teakwood and yew.
There's nothing better, and it don't impede her speed to any extent. You
ought to have been aboard coming up from Sandy Point--eleven point five
for days at a stretch. She'll do thirteen under forced draft. She'll do
two more knots with the wind abeam. That's six-day boat speed!"
Stirling shook his head. He had been accustomed to blunt-bowed whalers
with solid planking forward and steel sheathing aft to the waist. It was
the only construction he knew of which would stand the grind of the
Northern ice floes.
"Take a look at the whaleboats!" said Cushner. "Simpkins, of Dundee,
built them. They're mahogany trimmed. You don't often see that."
Stirling climbed the lee fore shrouds and grasped a white boat's rail
where it swung from polished davits just aft the break of the forepeak,
and peered inside. The whaling gear was all in place; he counted two
tubs of whale line which was carefully protected by new tarpaulins. The
oars were fully sixteen feet in length, and paddles were racked beneath
the seats. A mast and boom--harpoons, lances, bomb guns, blubber spades,
bailing dippers--lay in position between the centerboard well and the
skin of the boat.
"Good equipment!" he declared, dropping to the deck with a light
rebound. "They'll do. Wouldn't wonder if we have some sport this voyage.
Last season was a bad one. It ain't natural for two bad years to run
together. They take turns about--watch and watch."
"She's well outfitted, Stirling. Thar ain't no better ship going North
this season. You ought to drop down into the engine room and see that
triple-expansion dream. Baldwin and Maddox say it's one of the finest
engines ever turned out of Clyde-bank. Russia bought good stuff in the
early days. She had the money then!"
Stirling stared aft to the deck house, out of which sleepy-eyed Kanakas
and boat steerers were appearing, then stepped to one rail and studied
the swinging sheer of the _Pole Star_. He saw beyond the smoke of the
cook's stovepipe the swinging lift of the quarter-deck. Upon this a
figure strode from rail to rail. It was Marr.
"How about that woman?" The question dropped from Stirling's lips as he
turned toward the Yankee second mate.
"Your guess is as good as mine. I didn't know Marr had any woman in view
when he dropped anchor in this port. There's a kind of a law against
women going North in whalers, ain't there?"
"The owners don't allow it! But then Marr is an owner. He could do
anything."
Cushner stroked his beard. He twirled its point. "I heard voices on deck
last night," he said with reserve. "I'm willin' to venture five plugs of
tobacco that one was a woman's voice. Maybe she came out to say good-bye
to the skipper. Maybe she didn't. Maybe it's his wife."
Stirling reached in the pocket of his pea-jacket and fished out a plug
of select tobacco. "I don't often chew," he said, "but I'll bet this
plug against another that it wasn't a woman's voice you heard."
"You're on!" exclaimed the mate. "It was a woman's voice. She went
below, and she's aboard now. Time will fetch her out. Marr is as
close-mouthed as an oyster. She's some relation; that's sure!"
Stirling pocketed the plug, folded his arms, and stood smiling before
the big mate. He shook his head. "I'll win that plug," he said,
sincerely. "I'm a simple man, Cushner. It don't stand to reason that
Marr would bring a woman on a whaling trip. If he's figuring on going to
Disko Island and the Siberian coast it would be dangerous. Those are
desperate seas!"
"Here's the watches!" exclaimed the second mate. "Let's stir our stumps
and get the ship out, smart-like. We'll forget the lady till you see for
your own eyes. Likely she's pretty."
Stirling snorted, his mind running back to his only love affair. It was
merged in the failure of a chicken farm over Oakland way. A widow had
cast eyes at the farm until the chickens began to pass away. This widow
had often dwelt upon the happiness of married life. Stirling, still in
his late forties, had thought long and seriously over the matter. He was
a man's man, and felt that women, and particularly dashing widows,
belonged to another sphere. They were as much out of his life as the
stars that floated in the heavens--as remote as the centre of the
antarctic continent. He had sailed the Northern seas too long and far to
allow his mind to dwell upon the land as a final anchorage to his
ambitions.
He made his way aft to the wheel while the mate lunged forward and
joined the group upon the forecastle head. Marr stood close by the
binnacle, and just then turned to the wheelsman.
"Stand ready," he said, raising his eyes to Stirling's. "You take
charge," he added, smiling faintly as the Ice Pilot shot a keen glance
upward where the morning sun was breaking through the last of the mist.
"The deck is yours, Mr. Stirling. Mr. Whitehouse will go forward and
join Mr. Cushner."
Stirling squared his shoulders and braced his legs.
The little skipper, spick and span in blue pea-jacket and well-cut
trousers, strode briskly to the quarter-deck rail and leaned over.
"Steam on the winch!" he shouted. "Lively now, men!"
A racking grind sounded, and the iron teeth of the winch swallowed the
rusty chain like a giant biting a meal. The ship steadied in the tide
which was flowing through the Golden Gate as the anchor lifted from the
mud and silt of the bay.
"All's clear!" Cushner called over the whaleboats.
"Hard aport!" said Stirling, sensing the position. "Put her hard aport.
Now up a spoke! More! Steady there!"
Marr reached for the engine-room telegraph, a bell clanged below, the
single screw thrashed the water astern and the _Pole Star_ rounded on a
long arc, gliding down the bay to a position off Meigg's Wharf.
A pilot and the last papers were brought out in a revenue cutter as
Stirling kept the ship under bare headway. The siren aft the funnel
plumed into one short blast, and they were off on the first leg of the
passage to the Arctic and the Bering Sea.
Foghorn and whistle sounded in cadence, and was answered from starboard
and port. Once a bell rang directly ahead through the fog. The engines
raced in reverse, and the _Pole Star_ swung with her dainty jib boom
groping through the fog like an antenna. She straightened under the
pilot's directions.
The veil thinned, as the sun struck through, bringing out the clean-cut
details of the yards and spars. A stagelike setting appeared. To port
lay the city--hill after hill of close-packed habitations; to starboard
reared the green slopes of the Coast Range and the higher land of Mount
Tamalpais. Beyond and directly ahead the sun kissed the sparkling ocean.
The _Pole Star_ glided under the frowning guns of the Presidio, and
danced across the bar. The Cliff House and the seal rocks were thrown
astern. The land of California sank to a low, black line after the pilot
had been dropped upon the deck of a tossing kicker yacht.