The _Pole Star_ threaded the ice floes like a dancer on a polished
floor. She drove all that day north and east; she crashed through new
ice; she dodged the ancient floes and worked into the pack and through
the lanes under the masterful handling of the Ice Pilot, who sought no
rest. Coffee was brought to him by the galley boy. With this, and now
and then a drag from his pipe, he held down three watches until morning
broke and revealed to the east the higher line of the barrier beyond
which the ship could not go.
"Pack ahead!" he announced, turning and staring shrewdly toward Marr who
stood with Cushner on the poop. "Yon's the North pack!"
Marr lifted his face and returned the stare, then dropped his eyes under
the steady scrutiny and consulted Cushner.
Stirling swung and rimmed the white line without glasses. He knew it of
old and knew that it was too early to find a lane leading north or east.
The ancient floes were still cemented together in an unyielding mass.
Upon them snow glistened, and pools of fresh water showed.
"Tie to the pack!" called Marr. "Pick out a place to get water. Find a
hummock we can lash to. We'll lie here a while!"
Into a tiny bight of open water, sheltered on three sides by ancient
ice, Stirling drove the _Pole Star_. Here she was lashed to a hummock by
a hawser which three of the crew carried overside and hitched in a
bowline of staunch hemp.
The seamen and boat steerers swarmed over the whaler's rail and
stretched themselves by a swift run upon the ice. They caught a hose
thrown to them and carried its end to a pool of fresh water which had
been formed by melting snow.
The pump clanked, the deck tanks were filled, and the first engineer,
assisted by the engine-room force, started work on a boiler which had
three leaking tubes in the tube sheet. The smallest of their number
crawled through the manhole and started clipping the scale, his tapping
sounding throughout the ship.
Stirling descended from the crow's-nest, after a last glance toward the
northeast. There floe ice, packed and cemented together, extended to the
cold rim of the horizon, with no sign of lanes. The warm sun of the day
and its work was undone each night by the freezing cold.
Cushner met Stirling at the rail, thrust out his broad hand, and smiled
proudly.
"Fine ice work!" said the second mate. "I knew you could do it. Marr was
watching you all the time!"
"Does he know anything about ice?"
"Thundering little! He's a Baffin Bay man, so he says. There's a lot of
difference between the Bay and the Bering."
"Considerable! It's a question of currents, here. The pack is farther
south than I ever saw it at this time of the year. That means an open
season when it breaks. What do you make of the weather?"
The second mate glanced at the telltale on the cap of the mizzenmast.
"Good," he said. "Wind's swinging to th' south'ard."
"That means a thaw, Sam."
"The ice is soft on top. See the water holes?"
Stirling nodded then turned and stared over the broken surface where the
crew was moving. "There's hair seals aplenty," he said. "Too bad, Sam,
them ain't fur seals. Maybe Marr would be satisfied to stay right here."
Cushner widened his eyes. "Still thinking of a raid?" he inquired,
shrewdly.
"That, and other things. Look to the south'ard. Did you ever see better
whaling ground? There's slick aplenty. My, how I'd like to lower for a
bowhead! They're all along this ice."
"Nobody's raised any spouts, yet."
"They're there! They can't get north. The barrier holds them. It was
just like this when we caught three big bowheads from the _Mary Foster_.
Lowered four boats and fastened to three whales. That was a great day!"
The earnestness in Stirling's strong voice showed Cushner where his
heart lay, and he glanced at the low-swinging sun which was going down
on a long arc that marked the end of a Northern day.
"Good-night," he said. "Go turn in and forget bowheads. I don't think
the old man is thinking about them. He's full of seals. He asked me a
thousand questions about them. Darn sealing, says I! Whaling's a man's
game! Many an old bowhead has fought back. Many a boat's been smashed by
a bull whale--up here or in the South Pacific."
Stirling nodded his head in complete understanding, for he realized the
call which was in the big mate's blood. He watched him disappear into
the galley-house, then followed, after a glance about the deck. Many of
the crew were still out upon the ice.
His cabin seemed strangely small and constricted, and he opened a
porthole which overlooked the deck and rail and sea to the south. He
examined his few possessions with wistful eyes--a bomb gun, brightly
polished, standing in one corner of the cabin, a sextant and ancient
chronometer resting upon a shelf, a Bowditch and well-thumbed almanac
which comprised his library. His clothes were but few and worn.
He turned in, after undressing, snapping off his light and rolling over
on his right arm. He drowsed with the music of the grinding floes in his
ears, then heard a racking shiver which came from the north and east; it
was the great North pack breaking along its entire length.
He awoke like a startled child. Cushner's pointed beard was thrust
through the open porthole, and the second mate's wide-set eyes were
intent and hard.
"Climb out of your bunk!" he said. "Get in your boots and join me on the
ice. I'll be right by the hummock where the shore line is."
Stirling hastily dressed and wrapped a great sea coat, with shell
buttons, about his form. He stepped out on the dark deck with firm
stride, glancing intuitively aft as he threw one leg over the port rail,
after rounding the deck house.
Nothing showed on the poop. A faint light, however, struck upward and
brought out the lacery of the after standing rigging. This light
vanished suddenly, then a companion hatch slammed.
Stirling dropped to the ice and crawled over its surface till he reached
a towering hummock. Behind this Cushner was crouching, and the big mate
laid a finger across his whiskered lips.
Stirling knelt upon the snow and listened. He heard the lapping of the
waves as they ran up the shelving ice, with now and then a breaker which
shot a white plume starward. The broken fragments of the southern floes
ground together, and the night was filled with a thousand sounds which
blended into a roar.
Then, and suddenly, there rose from the poop of the whaler a shaft of
yellow light. A voice was raised, and the notes of a song drifted
through the open portholes of the after cabin. Marr was singing:
"English there be and Portigee,
Who hang on the Brown Bear's flank,
And some be Scot, but the worst of the lot--
The boldest thieves be Yank!"
Cushner gripped Stirling's arm. "That's ain't all," he said with a deep
warning. "Who is standing on the poop? Who's that in the shelter of the
canvas, aft--right by the jack staff?"
Stirling peered out from behind the hummock, grasped the hawser, and
drew himself forward. He pulled down his cap and opened wide his
splendid eyes. Cushner was right. There was a figure on the poop, and
this figure moved and came slowly across the planks to the rail which
overlooked the waist of the whaler.
Glasses clinked in the cabin. Whitehouse joined his cockney accents to a
song:
"Oh, I'm th' son of a gentleman,
For I takes m' whisky clear--
I takes m' whisky clear----"
The figure on the poop leaned over the rail. Stirling strained his ears;
a sob racked the Arctic air, and the figure on the quarter-deck
straightened with a convulsive shudder. Whitehouse's voice broke out
afresh, and the song was drunken and masterful.
The form above the bold singer turned away from the rail of the ship and
glided slowly aft. A yellow light shot upward as a companion was slowly
opened, then this light was blotted out degree by degree; the companion
hatch clicked shut.
Minutes passed. Neither man on the ice moved; both were deep in thought.
The two facts were hard to gather to the brain: Marr and Whitehouse were
in the cabin, drinking; another Marr had stood upon the quarter-deck. It
was the little captain--line for line. In one thing only did it
differ--the racking sob at the drunken levity below was from a woman's
throat. It was a protest which she believed fell upon the Northern
silences.
Stirling sprang to his feet with an icy glint in his blue eyes.
"We'll fathom that mystery," he told Cushner. "We'll fathom it if it
takes to the last day of the voyage!"