Night came on with the Pole Star logging thirteen knots. The ship was surprisingly handled by the Russians, who worked more by intuition than from experience, but they had the sense of drift and direction. The Bear was left hull down in the flecked field astern, but still coming on grimly.
Walruses and seals were distributed by the wash of the ship; lone wolves howled from the shore; a polar bear lumbered over the ice as the Pole Star crashed through, staggered, and resumed its eastward course. The Russians on deck surged aft for fear of catastrophe. Surrounding the wheelman and the leader, they peered anxiously toward the after companion which was barricaded on the inside.
Streamers of yellow light shot athwart the eastern heavens, and this light brightened into a nebula of crimson. The aurora played and flickered and surged upward toward the zenith, while through it the pale stars shone. A moon rose and rolled along the lowland which lay between Lisburne and Icy Cape. The Barren Country stood revealed in cold splendour, stretching to the ramparts of the Mackenzie River and the mountains at Fort Yukon.
A sense of motion came to Stirling, for he knew the waters. Never before, however, had he found the sea so open. The aged and grounded floes were well to the northwest, and had not been driven above the seven-fathom line. The lane they left for navigation was wide enough to float all the navies of the world, and only a great storm would close it behind the Pole Star.
Midnight found Stirling weary of the details of the voyage and weak from lack of food and water. A languor stole over his rugged frame; he yawned and attempted to sleep, but a clang of a fire door and a quarter-point swing of the ship awakened him to dull consciousness. He peered over the edge of the crow's-nest.
The deck below seemed a haven; there was food and water there. The way down would be short. He searched about for some sign of the Russians. Aside from the wheelman's head over the barricade and a towering leader standing by the weather rail of the quarter-deck, there was no one in sight.
The funnel, almost beneath shrouds, was crowned with a ring of fire, and a shift of wind now and then drove smoke upward. Stirling choked in this, tried to marshal the details of an escape, but felt his position was far too desperate to await daylight. The Russians were sleeping off the last of the gin. Their leader had given orders to drive for Point Barrow and take the chances to be met there.
Stirling widened his eyes and pressed his hand to his hot brow, studying the white lane of water which was bordered by ice on one quarter and the dark land upon the other. A providence had the ship in its grip. Small floes were avoided by no effort of the wheelman and thin ice, formed overnight, was ripped as satin by a knife.
Point Barrow was less than five hours' steaming ahead, and beyond the Point, with its whaling station and its native village, lay the open Sea of Beaufort and the unknown land of Keenan. It was a desperate sea into which to venture, and the horror of the short month came home to Stirling. He was facing cold, starvation, and isolation—a trinity of despair.
The stars paled as the slow dawn started creeping along the eastern heavens. The onward surge of the ship through the dream scene of flecked ice patches and mirrorlike water became a vision of unreality.