“Big patch away to starboard!” cried a man in the foremast shrouds.
Dampier turned to Wyllard. “What are you going to do?”
“What’s most advisable?”
The skipper looked grave. “Well,” he said, “that’s quite simple. Get out of this, and head her south just as soon as we can, but I guess that’s not quite what you mean.”
“No,” admitted Wyllard. “I meant for the next few hours or so. In a general way, we’re still pushing on.”
“I’m not worrying much about pushing her through. That ice is light and scattered, and as she’s going it won’t hurt her much if she plugs some in the dark. It’s what we’re going to do the next two weeks that I’m not sure about. If there’s ice we mayn’t fetch the creek, where we’d figured on laying her up. It’s still most a hundred miles to the north of us. The other inlet I’d fixed on is way further south.”
This brought them back to the difficulty with which they had grappled at many a council. The men for whom they searched might have gone either north or south, or they might have gone inland, if, indeed, any of them survived.
“If we only knew how they had headed,” said Wyllard quietly. “Still, right or not, I’m for pushing on.”
Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.
“I guess it’s north,” he assented. “They’d have no use for fetching up among the Russians, and there’s nobody else until you get to Japan. No white men, anyway. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is quite a long way.”