Stirling knelt upon the snow and listened. He heard the lapping of the waves as they ran up the shelving ice, with now and then a breaker which shot a white plume starward. The broken fragments of the southern floes ground together, and the night was filled with a thousand sounds which blended into a roar.
Then, and suddenly, there rose from the poop of the whaler a shaft of yellow light. A voice was raised, and the notes of a song drifted through the open portholes of the after cabin. Marr was singing:
"English there be and Portigee,
Who hang on the Brown Bear's flank,
And some be Scot, but the worst of the lot—
The boldest thieves be Yank!"
Cushner gripped Stirling's arm. "That's ain't all," he said with a deep warning. "Who is standing on the poop? Who's that in the shelter of the canvas, aft—right by the jack staff?"
Stirling peered out from behind the hummock, grasped the hawser, and drew himself forward. He pulled down his cap and opened wide his splendid eyes. Cushner was right. There was a figure on the poop, and this figure moved and came slowly across the planks to the rail which overlooked the waist of the whaler.
Glasses clinked in the cabin. Whitehouse joined his cockney accents to a song:
"Oh, I'm th' son of a gentleman,
For I takes m' whisky clear—
I takes m' whisky clear——"
The figure on the poop leaned over the rail. Stirling strained his ears; a sob racked the Arctic air, and the figure on the quarter-deck straightened with a convulsive shudder. Whitehouse's voice broke out afresh, and the song was drunken and masterful.
The form above the bold singer turned away from the rail of the ship and glided slowly aft. A yellow light shot upward as a companion was slowly opened, then this light was blotted out degree by degree; the companion hatch clicked shut.
Minutes passed. Neither man on the ice moved; both were deep in thought. The two facts were hard to gather to the brain: Marr and Whitehouse were in the cabin, drinking; another Marr had stood upon the quarter-deck. It was the little captain—line for line. In one thing only did it differ—the racking sob at the drunken levity below was from a woman's throat. It was a protest which she believed fell upon the Northern silences.