His pause was suggestive. Helen Marr stared out through the nearest porthole, then turned with a pucker showing at the corner of her mouth. "What were you going to say?" she asked.
"Otherwise we will be cast away in the land that Heaven forgot. There is nothing up here but death and starvation. There is no food or shelter; there is only cold and ice and desolation. It is almost all unexplored. Coronation Gulf, where we are heading, leads to Victoria Strait and Lancaster Sound. The passage was never made."
"But the Russians may make it. Isn't the season an open one?"
"So open that I fear we will go too far to turn back. There's coal enough aboard to take us to Baffin Bay."
"Uncle has been there."
"But not from this side of the world." Stirling glanced about the cabin and then stepped over to an ornate bookcase beneath which was a drawer filled with maps.
He unrolled a map and spread it across the table. "Come here," he said, nodding to the girl. "I'll show you where we are and where we're heading."
The girl stepped close to his side and leaned over the chart, following his pointing finger as he traced a course from Point Barrow to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. "From there," he said, "we may strike two ways. The most likely course is through Coronation Gulf, and then by Boothia Gulf, but there's another route to the eastward. It leads west by the compass and around this land." Stirling pressed his thumb on a maze of inlets and narrow straits. "If the revolutionists try that course we're cast away in the polar pack. It'll be all up with you and me."
The girl drew back the chart and raised her finger to her lips, almost pouting as she asked: "Are you afraid?"
Stirling stammered and rolled up the chart with a swift motion of his right palm. "Not exactly afraid," he said; "but with the crew on deck that we have, there is every chance of getting nipped."