The two in the cabin stared up at the shadows on the deck light, and these shadows moved away as the girl rose from the piano stool and came across the deck.
"You had better go into the stateroom and get some sleep, Mr. Stirling," she suggested. "You look tired and worn. Sleep would do you a world of good. I'll stand guard."
Stirling climbed the companion steps and tested the barricade of oak timbers which Marr and Slim had fitted, then came down and went forward to the curtain. A second doorway, which was at the end of the alley, had been nailed shut with three-inch spikes, and there seemed no way for the revolutionists to break into the after part of the ship.
He moved the table over the hole he had cut in the deck, and upon this piled stools and a bookcase for a barricade.
"Let me know if anything happens," Stirling said, as he stepped toward Marr's stateroom. "Be sure and do that!"
The girl lifted the rifle and stood at attention. "Good-night!" she said. "Shut the door; I'll wake you if it's necessary."
[CHAPTER XXXI—DANGER AND DOUBT]
When Stirling awoke it seemed to him that he had passed through an ocean of dreams. He rolled over and blinked through leaden eyes at the porthole. Dawn was breaking across a wild waste of Northern waters; ice floes and ancient packs floated by; seals sported; whale slick showed in oily patches, and the sun glanced over the smooth surface of the sea. A ripple showed where the Pole Star's sharp stem was cleaving the surface.
Stirling rubbed his eyes and listened. The steady clank of the engines and the vibration of the tail shaft beneath him still continued. He glanced upward. The tiny, telltale compass overhead was pointing west. The ship was headed for the true pole!
"Madmen!" said Stirling, springing out of the bunk.