Stirling gathered in the details of the whaler and his jaw dropped in wonder, while his eyes softened with an appreciative glow. He had never sailed or steamed upon such a ship. She was complete and yachtlike, and her deck house extended fore and aft between the main and mizzenmast. It was such a cabin as one would expect to find on a government revenue cutter. A squat, drab funnel reared from a boat deck, and glowed through the mist like the end of a fat cigar.
Stirling turned and mounted the poop, to face two of the men with whom he had drunk in that tavern near the wharves. One thrust out a hamlike hand. "Remember me?" he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. "I'm Cushner who took the Anderson expedition to the mouth of the Lena River. You were ice pilot of the Northern Lights that season. You gammed us in Bering Strait. Remember?"
Stirling stared up into the big seaman's face, squinting his eyes in an attempt to recall a vague memory. Slowly the details of the Anderson expedition came back to him.
"You're Cushner!" he blurted out. "By the jumpin' bowheads, you are! Who's the little fellow?" Stirling motioned toward the second seaman who had descended the lee poop steps and started forward to where a knot of men were gathered about the corner of the deck house.
The big mate of the ship leaned over the quarter-deck rail and said: "He's Marr—Captain Marr of the Baffin Bay crowd. See, he's mixin' with th' men. No man leaves this ship, but you, out of the bunch. Sailors are scarce as bowheads in the western ocean these days."
"Do you need a pilot?"
"We certainly do! You can come if you want to."
"How about this ship?"
"She's the Pole Star. She once was called the Alexander. She was a Russian yacht. She's fitted out for whaling and trading. Good food and all that. The old man will be glad to sign you on a big lay. We're going right up in the ice."
"Who'll be the afterguard?"