She whispered into his muffled ear: "Carry on!"
Stirling nodded and swung the spokes a quarter turn. They came back against the palm of his hand, and he peered through the snow. The moon had a double ring, and it awoke a verse from the girl who stood wrapped in her furs:
"That orbéd maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-lined floor,
By midnight breezes strewn."
Stirling turned his head slightly and smiled with the snow dripping from his lips. The girl glanced ahead and shuddered as a drifting cloud obscured the moon. The way was mantled with falling ice particles, and the ship's rigging showed up ghostlike. The muffled Russians on the forepeak moved about in the gloom like walruses that had climbed aboard.
The Pole Star hurtled on. Stirling sensed the true direction with the skill of a master pilot and dodged looming ice floes by fathoms. He swung the ship toward the magnetic west and reached for the high land which towered there, then sheered from this into the channel made by the inky waters. The Pole Star glided eastward along the meridian, and thrust her sharp stem through a lane of seething waves which marked the open reaches of Lancaster Sound.
The way to the south—north by the magnetic compass—was also open. Stirling sensed that it would be possible to drive through the Gulf of Boothia, and this route might take him to Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. He chose the easterly passage and set his feet wide apart as the floes dashed down upon the staunch ship.
Helen Marr leaned over the wheel and watched the binnacle. The compass whirled and was never still. They were over the true magnetic pole, and north was south; only the sense of direction told Stirling the course to steer, but he held on grimly, with his jaw set to a block. The Russians on the forepeak shouted warnings, waves came over the jib boom and the forecastle, and the churning vortex of cross currents and storm dashed the ship like a chip in a whirlpool, while the snow fell in circling clouds.
The passage led to the lee of North Somerset Island, and a towering headland of basalt protected the ship from the fury of the south wind. A calm spot showed ahead, through which moonbeams shone.
Stirling released one hand from the wheel and pointed. "See," he said. "See, that is Somerset! We're heading for North Devon Island and Lancaster Sound. We are already in the Strait. I never knew it was open!"
Open it was, as the girl saw. The moon revealed the serrated outlines of the land to the southward, where the sharp teeth of the coast range, which buttressed the shore, stood out bare of ice or snow. It seemed a huge saw cutting across the top of the world.