"They're going to abandon the ship. It means their death."
"Can't you stop them?" The girl had begun to believe that Stirling was strong enough to accomplish anything.
"It would be no use trying," he said, removing his cap and fingering it with fingers which tingled. "Their minds are made up. The leader thinks he can reach a Hudson Bay post. He does not know what I know——"
Stirling's voice trailed off into an expressive pause, as he thought of the grim tales he had heard of Banks Land and the Gulf of Boothia. Many trappers and explorers had laid their bones out on the Arctic wilds. The land was barren, extending to the white ramparts of the Mackenzie River on the south and west, and to the Hudson Bay on the east and north. It was without vegetation or animal life for nine months of the year, and the water courses were frozen over to the same dead level as the rest of the world. Only the white fox and the skulking wolf were to be seen, and these two animals were far too wary to be shot.
"They're lost if they leave the ship," said Stirling, waking from his thoughts. "We'll stay here and winter, if necessary. The ice may crush the Pole Star, but we can get enough provisions and fuel ashore to last out. It might be possible to work to the west next summer in a whaleboat. It all depends on the season. I never saw one so open as this one was, but there may never be another like it, Miss Marr."
The girl turned toward the porthole, and the cold breeze which cut through the opening brought colour to her cheeks and fanned her hair.
"Is there no chance of getting through to the open sea this summer?" she asked, shivering slightly and drawing her deerskin jacket about her slight waist.
"Yes, by Heaven; there is a chance!" Stirling's voice rose and filled the cabin. "There's a fighting chance, Miss Marr!"
She turned and stared at him, and her lips formed the question. He laid his cap on the table and opened his pea-jacket, breathing with giant gulps of suppressed emotion. Suddenly the air had grown warm to him. "I can get through," he said, "if within a few hours the wind shifts to the south and west. That will clear Barrow Strait of ice. Once out of the Strait, the way is open to Baffin Bay through the Lancaster Sound."
Helen Marr clapped her hands, then wheeled with swishing skirts and stared out through the porthole. "The wind," she said, "is dying. Does that indicate anything?"