Marr lifted his face and returned the stare, then dropped his eyes under the steady scrutiny and consulted Cushner.
Stirling swung and rimmed the white line without glasses. He knew it of old and knew that it was too early to find a lane leading north or east. The ancient floes were still cemented together in an unyielding mass. Upon them snow glistened, and pools of fresh water showed.
"Tie to the pack!" called Marr. "Pick out a place to get water. Find a hummock we can lash to. We'll lie here a while!"
Into a tiny bight of open water, sheltered on three sides by ancient ice, Stirling drove the Pole Star. Here she was lashed to a hummock by a hawser which three of the crew carried overside and hitched in a bowline of staunch hemp.
The seamen and boat steerers swarmed over the whaler's rail and stretched themselves by a swift run upon the ice. They caught a hose thrown to them and carried its end to a pool of fresh water which had been formed by melting snow.
The pump clanked, the deck tanks were filled, and the first engineer, assisted by the engine-room force, started work on a boiler which had three leaking tubes in the tube sheet. The smallest of their number crawled through the manhole and started clipping the scale, his tapping sounding throughout the ship.
Stirling descended from the crow's-nest, after a last glance toward the northeast. There floe ice, packed and cemented together, extended to the cold rim of the horizon, with no sign of lanes. The warm sun of the day and its work was undone each night by the freezing cold.
Cushner met Stirling at the rail, thrust out his broad hand, and smiled proudly.
"Fine ice work!" said the second mate. "I knew you could do it. Marr was watching you all the time!"
"Does he know anything about ice?"