Stirling searched the way ahead, and recognized familiar landmarks from other voyages. The ribs of a whale ship showed high driven upon the tundra. This was the wreck of the George M. Foster, thrust ashore three seasons before by the pressure of the North pack.
Other wrecks marked the beach, showing where a fleet of whalers had attempted to gain the shelter of Point Barrow. A northwester had scattered them and laid their bones out upon the pale Arctic wilds. Men had died there from starvation and cold.
Native villages showed, with their summer huts gaunt and bare against the snow, and behind them igloos, fast melting in the warm air. Kayaks and umiaks dotted the beach; dogs came down to the shore and stared at the ship. A head was thrust through a tent's bark door, and a hand waved. Then afterward had come the rushing of dark forms along the tundra and the cries of natives.
The wheelsman held the centre of the course between the North pack and the sand spits. The leader, muffled to the eyes in sealskin, came out of the galley and glanced aloft. The orders he gave were for more steam, and the funnel belched forth smoke and driven cinders. The screw thrashed as the ship hurtled on into the brightening dawn.
Stirling climbed out of the crow's-nest, lowered his legs over its forward edge, and sat there with his hands gripping one of the downhauls. The sea ahead was polished and rippleless, the way to Point Barrow was open, and already the land had bent to the north and west. They were now rounding Alaska.
A shout rose from the dark deck, forms swarmed from the forecastle, and the ship took on churning life. The leader had sensed the danger to be met with at Point Barrow. A premonition had seized him that the Bear might have signalled by wireless to a waiting government boat.
Stirling divined that this would be the case, and pressed his palm against his head. The throbbing of the ship, felt at the masthead, drove a surge of nausea through his stout frame. The end was close at hand, unless they struck out to open sea, through the ice floes, and avoided the Point.
A misted sun rose in the north and east, directly before the taper jib boom of the Pole Star. It drove the last of the aurora from the sky, rose in a rolling eye of fire, and brought out all the details of the stretching Arctic wild.
To the north and west showed great floes, which had grounded upon the shallow land which marked the seven-fathom bank. Between these floes lanes appeared, filled with whale slick and sporting seals. They led to the true north and the solid pack below the cold horizon.
Swinging the helm with sudden intuition, the leader drove the ship down a wide lane and away from the shore. Stirling sensed this manœuvre was to avoid being sighted at the Point. The leader had spread a chart out upon the quarter-deck, and his thumb traced a course which would take him away from any possible pursuit; it would also be a venture into an unknown sea. Blond Eskimos and castaways from Franklin's expedition were supposed to people the polar shores of Banks and Keenan Land.