Stirling sprang to his feet with an icy glint in his blue eyes.
"We'll fathom that mystery," he told Cushner. "We'll fathom it if it takes to the last day of the voyage!"
[CHAPTER XI—BENEATH THE SURFACE]
The sun came up on a long slant, to swing its southern arc. Glancing from ice floe to ice floe, it seemed a cold bronze disk placed in motion by some Norseman of the Arctic wilds.
Stirling, haggard and with hot, fevered eyes, sat at the steerage table watching the light striking across a red-checked table cover and bringing out the rude details of the cabin.
He had not slept since seeing that strange figure on the quarter-deck of the whaler. He had sat erect throughout the morning watch, laying facts against facts, which seemed to dull and stupefy his sober senses.
At no time in his life had he believed in the supernatural. He did not share the beliefs, common to most seamen, that the sea held unfathomable mysteries. He had sniffed often at the tales told by old salts. Times without number he had pointed out that natural causes rule the happenings of this world. St. Elmo fire; the creaking of blocks in a calm; the dust on a dustless sea; the tapping that a bolt might make in a hollow spar—these were all phenomena which could be explained by science or good common sense.
The spectre on the poop of the Pole Star was as unexplainable as life itself. It bore the shape and form of Marr; it was not Marr, for the captain had been drinking and singing in the cabin. Stirling put trust in the sound of the human voice. It was one thing which could not easily be changed or disguised.
He rose, at six bells, with a slow shrug of his broad shoulders. He stood a moment with his hands gripping the racks, his face deeply lined with the ravages of a sleepless night. He held out his palm and stared at it; his fingers trembled uncontrollably. They always had been steady.
He made his way to the deck and stood by the rail which was nearest the great North pack. The cook, yawning, was making fire in the galley stove. A lone "anchor watch" pacing back and forth at the break of the forecastle head turned and stared at Stirling.