The air was cold with a snap of frost. A gale came from the south and west with a puff that ground the loose floes together. North, to the slaty horizon, stretched the broken surface of the ice field. It had a sound of its own—a grind and a creaking like a soul in agony.
Stirling rested his hands on the rail and stared downward. The whaler surged against the shelving ice, steadied, then surged back again. Seals peered curiously from the depths of the Bering. Some scrambled from the floes and plumped into the icy water. Walruses were upon the pack. They had broken through the thin ice formed overnight, and their whiskers and tusks were white with hoar frost.
Stirling stared aloft, then shuddered slightly and drew his great coat close about him. The ratlines and standing rigging, the downhauls and halyards formed a ghostly tapestry, like the gossamer web of some forest glade.
He raised his hands, breathed upon them to secure circulation, slowly climbed the rail, and reached for the shrouds, and thrusting his feet through the chains he mounted until he reached the Jacob's ladder. Going over this he leaned far outboard, glanced down at the deck, then finished the climb to the crow's-nest which was coated with frost.
Some whim of the current had cleared the sea to the south and east. It was as if a broom had swept through the pile of a purple carpet. The floes which had broken from the main pack had been whisked southward to melt in the warm waters of the north Pacific. Occasionally, however, a hoary old "grandpa" went drifting by with its load of walrus and hair seals, while over them hovered gulls and other birds.
Stirling narrowed his eyes and searched long and carefully for some sign of another whaler. The season was an early one. Bowheads were to be expected in such waters; the whale slick which showed marked their feeding ground. He saw no sign of sail or smoke. A slight haze to the southward marked the smoky sea where the chilled waters of the Bering met the first warm current which seeped through the passes of the Aleutian Group.
Climbing from the crow's-nest, Stirling swung out over the ladder and smiled slightly as he saw a patient fisherman, in the shaggy form of a polar bear, all too intent upon the circular opening of a seal's hole through the ice.
A whiff of galley smoke and the rattle of falling ice from the shrouds disturbed the fisherman. He raised his yellow snout, blinked his tiny eyes, and was off with a lumbersome trot toward the shelter of higher hummocks in the east.
Cushner appeared like a giant who had slept without turning over. He lifted his long arms, stretched, pointed his icicle-sharp beard aloft, and held his mouth open as he stared at Stirling swinging down the shrouds.
"By the stars, old man!" he exclaimed. "You're an early bird. Ain't more than seven bells, if it's that. Raised any bowheads yet?"