Soon Stirling felt the girl's body close beside him, but she had said no
word for hours. The glory of the Arctic night had held her spellbound;
the beauty of the North enthralled her. She was in tune with the great
wilderness of ice and snow.
Suddenly a soft gust of vapour-laden air swung over the island and
pressed the ship toward the true north. This gust was repeated. The
_Pole Star_ tugged at her anchor chain, the floes parted to leeward, and
a lane of open water showed. This led through the deeper part of Barrow
Strait; it was the road to open sea and Baffin Bay.
A Russian forward sang out a warning, leaning over the forepeak rail and
pointing toward the anchor chain.
"The wind has veered!" Stirling said, simply.
"From the south?" she asked.
"No; to the south and west, Miss Marr. We will have open water soon.
See!"
Helen Marr moved slowly to the rail and stared with brimming eyes toward
the white sheen of Russel Island, then turned impulsively. "Can't we
save the Russians?" she asked.
"No," he answered. "They have gone, perhaps to their doom. At least
there is nothing that we can do for them. For ourselves, we have chosen
the right road. It leads into the open sea!"
It was midnight by the ship's clock in the cabin when Stirling climbed
up the companion steps, glanced down at Helen Marr with an assuring nod,
then strode out upon the deck and swung four-square to the task ahead of
him.
The sun rimmed the world toward the true west, and through the opal
haze, its glow brought out the details of the drifting ice which was
being driven through Barrow Strait by the south wind.
Stirling made a note of this drift, and then moved toward the rail on
the lee side of the ship. The lane of open water, which showed black
against the floes and new ice, led toward the east and Melville Sound.
He measured the drift of a passing ice island, sniffed the air, raised
his hand, then turned slowly and glided toward the wheel. Leaning over
the canvas barricade he called down to the waist of the ship, and a form
stirred in the galley's shadow. It was Slim.
"Get below!" snapped Stirling. "Get steam on the forward winch. We're
going through the ice!"
This terse order rolled along the ship's deck, and brought the remaining
Russians from the warmth of the forecastle. Slim shrugged his shoulders
and slouched for the engine-room companion.
Steam soon plumed aft the funnel, when the banked fires were blown into
glowing coals. The winch wheezed and groaned as a Russian unskilfully
turned on the two-way cock. Stirling sprang to the lee steps and dropped
to the waist of the ship, going along the rail like a muffled bear in
search of prey.
"Unshackle it!" he shouted into the Russian's ear. "The winch is too
slow. Drive that pin from the anchor chain!"
Stirling pointed to where the chain passed through a hawse hole flush
with the deck, and the Russian understood. He lifted a belaying pin from
the rail and drove out the bolt. The anchor chain dropped overside as
Stirling sprang back, glanced forward, then hurried toward the
quarter-deck.
Swinging the wheel he reached and jerked the engine-room indicator for
quarter speed. The engines started, the screw thrashed the new ice
astern, and the _Pole Star_ sheered from the island, driving forward
toward the lane of dark water.
The sheathed prow cut sharply as Slim opened wide the main valve and
shouted for more steam. The ship listed, righted, and held a course
between rail-high floes until Stirling steadied the helm. The way was
open down the strait.
Helen Marr came through the cabin companion and stood by the nearest
deck light to Stirling, fearing to bother him or to call his name. Her
face was flushed with the agony of the moment, as the grinding floes
under the ship's counter threatened to rip the planks from the ribs. The
swing of Stirling's body as he wrestled with the wheel was a compelling
sight, and held her eyes as she waited. She breathed deeply of the
Arctic air, and called to Stirling, but he did not hear her. His
straining muscles stood out from his neck, and his shoulders lunged and
contracted.
The ship plunged on, the funnel belching forth smoke and cinders, which
starred the night like fireflies, and then fell hissing into the sea
astern. The land on the starboard beam rose to a barrier below which the
ice floes curled and eddied.
Stirling smashed through, with his unmittened hands gripping the spokes
of the wheel. Ahead showed the silvery glint of the moon. Astern, the
sun mellowed the Arctic world. About was death and cold, gripping
horror.
It was the passage that Franklin in the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ had sought
in vain, and it was open from sea to sea. Stirling realized this fact as
he reached for the engine-room telegraph and set it for full speed.
There was a chance to drive through before the wind shifted from the
south, but he was attempting a thing that the world called impossible.
Four bells came with the _Pole Star_ swirled in a white curtain of
driving snow which had been born of the south wind. The moon showed as a
silver disk directly over the frosted jib boom, and the sun had been
blotted from the view.
Helen Marr moved timidly toward the straining form of the Ice Pilot. He
felt her presence but did not swerve.
She whispered into his muffled ear: "Carry on!"
Stirling nodded and swung the spokes a quarter turn. They came back
against the palm of his hand, and he peered through the snow. The moon
had a double ring, and it awoke a verse from the girl who stood wrapped
in her furs:
"That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-lined floor,
By midnight breezes strewn."
Stirling turned his head slightly and smiled with the snow dripping from
his lips. The girl glanced ahead and shuddered as a drifting cloud
obscured the moon. The way was mantled with falling ice particles, and
the ship's rigging showed up ghostlike. The muffled Russians on the
forepeak moved about in the gloom like walruses that had climbed aboard.
The _Pole Star_ hurtled on. Stirling sensed the true direction with the
skill of a master pilot and dodged looming ice floes by fathoms. He
swung the ship toward the magnetic west and reached for the high land
which towered there, then sheered from this into the channel made by the
inky waters. The _Pole Star_ glided eastward along the meridian, and
thrust her sharp stem through a lane of seething waves which marked the
open reaches of Lancaster Sound.
The way to the south--north by the magnetic compass--was also open.
Stirling sensed that it would be possible to drive through the Gulf of
Boothia, and this route might take him to Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait.
He chose the easterly passage and set his feet wide apart as the floes
dashed down upon the staunch ship.
Helen Marr leaned over the wheel and watched the binnacle. The compass
whirled and was never still. They were over the true magnetic pole, and
north was south; only the sense of direction told Stirling the course to
steer, but he held on grimly, with his jaw set to a block. The Russians
on the forepeak shouted warnings, waves came over the jib boom and the
forecastle, and the churning vortex of cross currents and storm dashed
the ship like a chip in a whirlpool, while the snow fell in circling
clouds.
The passage led to the lee of North Somerset Island, and a towering
headland of basalt protected the ship from the fury of the south wind. A
calm spot showed ahead, through which moonbeams shone.
Stirling released one hand from the wheel and pointed. "See," he said.
"See, that is Somerset! We're heading for North Devon Island and
Lancaster Sound. We are already in the Strait. I never knew it was
open!"
Open it was, as the girl saw. The moon revealed the serrated outlines of
the land to the southward, where the sharp teeth of the coast range,
which buttressed the shore, stood out bare of ice or snow. It seemed a
huge saw cutting across the top of the world.
Stirling breathed deeply and studied the compass, then sheered to the
true north, crashed through a ledge of locked ice, and won the way to an
open lane which led toward the east and Baffin Bay.
The girl turned as a light struck across the churning waters, and cried
out as she saw the orange disk of the sun rising in the south. It had
broken through the snow flurry. It revealed the land and Sound, which
were coated in places with the recent snow, and brought out the flying
clouds as they scudded before the south wind.
She reached and clasped Stirling's arm. "The sun!" she exclaimed. "See,
our beacon! We shall win through to open sea!"
Stirling brought the wheel up and steadied it, smiling down into the
girl's glowing face. She watched him as he braced his legs and threw
back his head, then he turned away from her with a regretful jerk and
leaned down over the binnacle. He straightened up again as she quoted:
"The sanguine sunrise with his meteor eyes
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack
When the morning star shines dead."
"The morning star," Stirling said. "It's up there!" He pointed toward
the zenith, and Helen Marr followed the direction of his steady arm,
widening her eyes in amazement as she noted the lodestar almost
overhead. She waited for a cloud to pass and traced out the light points
of the Great Dipper. She saw then that what she had taken for overhead
was fourteen or fifteen degrees from the true vertical line.
"We're in about seventy-six degrees," she said, with certainty. "Almost
to the Pole!"
Stirling unclasped one hand from the spokes of the wheel and touched the
frosted glass over the binnacle compass. "Run your eyes along the south
line and you'll be looking toward the Pole. It's a long way down there,
Miss Marr. We're trying to work in the other direction."
The ship had covered the worst of the passage and the parting floes
showed the road to open sea. Stirling had made no mark of time, but he
realized dimly that Slim and the others who had gone below were getting
the utmost out of the boilers. The screw thrashed at its best speed, and
the smudge of smoke which drifted toward the north blotted out the view
of North Devon Island along which the course had led them.
Stirling breathed for the first time, sure of himself. He turned and
smiled at Helen Marr. "Cape Hay," he said, "is somewhere over there!"
The girl had never heard of Cape Hay, but shielding herself by the
ice-coated shrouds of the mizzen rigging, she strained her eyes toward
the south and east. Clouds showed beneath the silver reflection of the
moon, and a darker line was below the clouds. It rose in one point to a
headland.
She came back across the slippery deck and nodded. "I see it," she said
into his ear. "It's a long way off, Mr. Stirling."
Stirling smiled and nodded toward the binnacle. "We're on the course,"
he said. "How about a little coffee, Miss Marr?"
She was gone across the quarter-deck and down the cabin companion in an
instant.
Stirling opened two buttons of his pea-jacket and drew forth his great
silver watch. It was running, but the hours which had passed were
effaced from his memory. He had stood at the wheel for seven tricks, but
the distant Cape was thirty miles away through the driving snow. The
wind was shifting toward the west and abeam, and he knew that it would
be nip and tuck if he were to gain the open waters of Baffin Bay.