The Ice Pilot Part 4

"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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.s 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 das.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p under bare headway. The siren aft the funnel plumed into one short blast, and they were off on the first leg of the pa.s.sage 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.

CHAPTER V-INTO A PURPLE TWILIGHT

A breeze, fresh and gripping with the taste of brine, swept over the stern of the s.h.i.+p and filled the canvas which Cushner and Whitehouse ordered set. The anchor was brought inboard and lashed to the cleats close by the port cat. The crew, feeling their sea legs, brought out hose and swabs and started cleaning up the sh.o.r.e litter and dunnage, working to the old-time chantey: "'Rah for the grog-the jolly, jolly grog."

Stirling turned the wheel over to the quartermaster after Marr had indicated a compa.s.s point, then rolled across the quarter-deck and stood by the green starboard light of the s.h.i.+p, which was turned out. He felt the warm breath of the following wind, gulped the sea air, and squared his shoulders, casting a shrewd eye at the p.o.o.p-deck log, which was outrigged from the starboard rail.

The land of California was a haze over the starboard quarter. It lifted in places like a cloud bank, and the cleft which marked the Golden Gate was crossed by the white water of the bar. The Ice Pilot smiled, as the simplicity of clean living came to him as a flood.

He turned away from the land vision and studied the s.h.i.+p. On what mission was she headed, he wondered? Upon what seas would they force the taper jib boom? What trade stuff and spoil would be crammed between the hatches? He revolved these questions over and over in his mind, and was in the grip of the unknown. The little dapper skipper, the woman's voice, the mention of Disko Island, and the seal rookeries, all wove their spell:

"Though I plow the land with horses, Yet my heart is ill at ease, For the wise men come to me now and then With their sagas of the seas."

He quoted this verse as he pulled out a great silver watch, gathered in the log line, and timed fifty revolutions.

The _Pole Star_ was striking out into the Pacific on her first leg at fourteen point three knots an hour.

"Somebody's pullin' the strings," Stirling said as he let the slack out of the line and replaced the silver watch. "Maybe the Mazeka girls of Indian Point," he added, striding to the p.o.o.p rail.

He stared with idle interest at the crew which were still under the able tutelage of Whitehouse and Cushner. The British whaler had a voice like a costermonger, and "Blym me, yes" and "Heaven strike me pink" rolled up the wind and burst like shrapnel upon the p.o.o.p.

Stirling narrowed his eyes, and indeed the sight of the two mates in sea boots and the ragged crew swarming along the waist was one to charm the heart of a sailor. It brought to his mind other voyages, and he recalled an expedition he had piloted to Point Barrow and the reaches of the Mackenzie. A younger son, with money to spend, had chartered a whaler and taken the Northern seas in search of new game. Game he had found in plenty: walrus, seals-both hair and fur-killer whales, bowheads, polar bears, and musk ox had fallen to the younger son's rifle or harpoon. The crew, however, had proved too strong a stench for polite nostrils. They were picked from the slums of the Barbary Coast.

The _Pole Star's_ foremast hands and the most of the harpooners and boat steerers would have delighted the eyes of an ethnologist. Stirling studied them and called their breeds. One was a c.o.c.kney, like the mate.

Another was a blue-eyed Dane. Three Gay Island natives were mixed with two Kanakas. Two bore the high cheekbones of Swedes. Four, at least, were Frisco dock rats who had been gathered in by the boarding-house runners and promised an advance, little of which they secured.

Stirling searched the faces for the sailor whom he had seen in the Frisco room, but he was not in evidence. That sailor had impressed Stirling as far out of the ordinary. It was not only the polished fingernails and the resolute set to the jaw, but also the certain air which the seaman had carried that led to the deduction that he had at one time commanded other men.