Cushner shook his head. "We'll watch that fellow like a killer whale. He'll walk straight under me and Whitehouse."
The second mate closed his jaws with a snap and glared forward, then was off with a rolling lurch to where a slight spot showed on the deck. Grasping a Gay Islander by the neck, he led him to the omission and pointed downward. Stirling heard the racking volley of exclamations as the native fell to work with vigour.
The Pole Star plunged on. She took the long, oily rollers of the North Pacific and parted them like a sharp knife going through frosting. She was logging fourteen knots with reserve steam. The fore, main, and mizzen sails filled and billowed and the foretopmast staysail and jib held the following wind. Whitehouse, casting an eye aloft, ordered the top-sails braced then sprang to the weather braces as the crew hauled manfully under the directions of Cushner.
Marr leaned over the canvas of the poop and rested his elbows on the light rail, searching the sea ahead with his glasses. He turned to the wheelsman. "How you heading?" he asked as the last yard was braced.
"Nor'west by north."
"Hold her northwest by north. Hold her steady!"
The ship drove through the day and into a purple twilight, and the land of California disappeared astern. It left to mark its position a low line of gray clouds upon which the sun gleamed and paled and died to darker hues.
[CHAPTER VI—BY THE GREAT-CIRCLE ROUTE]
The steady clanking of the triple-expansion engines driving the screw at a racing speed of one hundred and ten revolutions a minute, the glow over the drab funnel, the hiss of sea alongside—these all denoted that they were reaching for the far-off Aleutian and the pass that marked Dutch Harbor, where whalers and Yukon boats left the Pacific and entered the waters of the Bering Sea.
Stirling shared the mess with Cushner and Whitehouse and the two engineers. Marr had given orders that in no circumstances should he be disturbed in the after cabin. This order, communicated by the cockney mate, caused the conversation to veer from speculation to concrete suspicions.