The girl had never heard of Cape Hay, but shielding herself by the ice-coated shrouds of the mizzen rigging, she strained her eyes toward the south and east. Clouds showed beneath the silver reflection of the moon, and a darker line was below the clouds. It rose in one point to a headland.
She came back across the slippery deck and nodded. "I see it," she said into his ear. "It's a long way off, Mr. Stirling."
Stirling smiled and nodded toward the binnacle. "We're on the course," he said. "How about a little coffee, Miss Marr?"
She was gone across the quarter-deck and down the cabin companion in an instant.
Stirling opened two buttons of his pea-jacket and drew forth his great silver watch. It was running, but the hours which had passed were effaced from his memory. He had stood at the wheel for seven tricks, but the distant Cape was thirty miles away through the driving snow. The wind was shifting toward the west and abeam, and he knew that it would be nip and tuck if he were to gain the open waters of Baffin Bay.
[CHAPTER XXXV—A MATTER OF MINUTES]
The floes through which Stirling guided the ship became larger and higher. Old "grandpas" drifted by—their sides honeycombed by the action of the water. These floes had broken from the true pack and had come south through Smith Sound. Icebergs were to be expected, since the coast of Greenland was filled with glaciers. Stirling peered forward and searched the sea, momentarily expecting to glimpse a white barrier beyond which he could not go, but none showed as the watch lengthened.
The girl appeared with a steaming can of black coffee, and also biscuits and bread. Stirling set the can on the top of the brass binnacle hood and munched a biscuit, eying Helen Marr with concern. Dark circles showed upon her face, her lips had lost some of their blood, and tiny puckers ran from the corners of her mouth.
He moved the wheel and said to her, "Please get some sleep. You look tired, Miss Marr. I'll hold on!"
She laughed, drawing close her deerskin jacket, and reaching for the spokes. "Let me steer?" she asked. "It isn't so bad now. I can hold the course."