Stirling turned toward the leader, and the small eyes before him lightened where they had been filled with fear. A gross, hairy hand swept forward expressively.
"You don't know where you are?" asked Stirling, gesturing.
The man, apparently getting the sense of the Ice Pilot's question, shook his head.
"Do you want to go back?" Stirling pointed the rifle toward the jack staff and the stern of the ship.
The leader repeated his nod, then spoke to the two others, who, Stirling decided, also held office among the revolutionists. They lumbered to the rail and stared forward, raising their arms and pointing.
Stirling shaded his eyes from the rays of the sun which was swinging on a long slant over the sea, and saw ahead, and to starboard, the glint of horizon-down ice. He knew the reason—they were within thirty miles of Banks Land.
The sea was open to the magnetic west, where a hard line rimmed the surface. Gulls flew overhead, and the smoke of the furnaces blotted across the waters. The entire scene was one of desperate enterprise. They were steaming on an unknown ocean of danger and doubt, where no explorers had been able to penetrate. Only an open season, such as Stirling had never known before, permitted the Pole Star's progress.
With a mastering glance, he turned toward the leader, his head back, the cords of his neck showing like roots of some giant oak. Helen Marr seized his left hand and crept close up to him.
"I'll pilot this ship!" he said.
"Where?" asked Helen Marr.