"Keep her steady, then!" said Stirling with a smile, releasing the spokes and staring at the compass. "Steady, she is, while I go forward. There's a lane of open water ahead somewhere. We must find it."
She nodded, stared at the binnacle, and the spokes moved slowly and in the right direction as Stirling crossed the deck and descended to the waist of the ship. He paused a moment at the galley house and glanced in. Two Russians stood by the stove, cooking a mess for the engine-room crew.
Stirling nodded and worked his way forward over the icy deck. He climbed up the weather shrouds and out and over the cross jack, dropping into the crow's-nest.
Floes were scattered over the waters of Lancaster Sound near where it reached Baffin Bay. The wind had driven a mass of ice up through Prince Regent Inlet, and its reaching fangs threatened to dash the ship ashore on North Devon Island.
Stirling with his binoculars swept the entire horizon. The wind had shifted a point over the hour, and now came from over the high plateau of Baffin Land, as it circled to the magnetic north and the true west. This would close Lancaster Sound so that no ship could drive a passage through.
Reaching forward, Stirling rested his elbows upon the edge of the crow's-nest and strained his eyes toward the opening which showed in the direction of Cape Hay and Baffin Bay. It was partly choked with ice, and a low berg loomed in the haze.
Turning, Stirling called down to Helen Marr, and the order he gave was to put the wheel up and then steady it. The new course was more toward the true south than the east, and was calculated to head off the reaching arm of ice which threatened to close Lancaster Sound.
After a last glance over the wild waste of waters and snow-mantled lands, Stirling swung out of the crow's-nest and started toward the deck. Icicles and frozen patches of snow fell from the shrouds as the ship swerved and steadied on the given course. Stirling saw that the girl had avoided a floe by a skillful lift of the wheel.
This fact cheered him. He had a companion who was doing her best, a true friend to a sailorman who had broken through to a desperate sea. He went down the remainder of the shrouds and over the deck with his head lowered in thought. The chance to save the ship was slight, and it would call for all his cunning in ice work. The fangs were being bared for the final nip. Already the floes had thickened ahead.
"I'll take the wheel," he said as he stepped to her side. "You go below for an hour. Then I shall call you."