Stirling shook his head. He had been accustomed to blunt-bowed whalers with solid planking forward and steel sheathing aft to the waist. It was the only construction he knew of which would stand the grind of the Northern ice floes.
"Take a look at the whaleboats!" said Cushner. "Simpkins, of Dundee, built them. They're mahogany trimmed. You don't often see that."
Stirling climbed the lee fore shrouds and grasped a white boat's rail where it swung from polished davits just aft the break of the forepeak, and peered inside. The whaling gear was all in place; he counted two tubs of whale line which was carefully protected by new tarpaulins. The oars were fully sixteen feet in length, and paddles were racked beneath the seats. A mast and boom—harpoons, lances, bomb guns, blubber spades, bailing dippers—lay in position between the centerboard well and the skin of the boat.
"Good equipment!" he declared, dropping to the deck with a light rebound. "They'll do. Wouldn't wonder if we have some sport this voyage. Last season was a bad one. It ain't natural for two bad years to run together. They take turns about—watch and watch."
"She's well outfitted, Stirling. Thar ain't no better ship going North this season. You ought to drop down into the engine room and see that triple-expansion dream. Baldwin and Maddox say it's one of the finest engines ever turned out of Clyde-bank. Russia bought good stuff in the early days. She had the money then!"
Stirling stared aft to the deck house, out of which sleepy-eyed Kanakas and boat steerers were appearing, then stepped to one rail and studied the swinging sheer of the Pole Star. He saw beyond the smoke of the cook's stovepipe the swinging lift of the quarter-deck. Upon this a figure strode from rail to rail. It was Marr.
"How about that woman?" The question dropped from Stirling's lips as he turned toward the Yankee second mate.
"Your guess is as good as mine. I didn't know Marr had any woman in view when he dropped anchor in this port. There's a kind of a law against women going North in whalers, ain't there?"
"The owners don't allow it! But then Marr is an owner. He could do anything."
Cushner stroked his beard. He twirled its point. "I heard voices on deck last night," he said with reserve. "I'm willin' to venture five plugs of tobacco that one was a woman's voice. Maybe she came out to say good-bye to the skipper. Maybe she didn't. Maybe it's his wife."