The Bear slowly vanished into the mist, and a line of dark smoke marked her going.
Cushner laid down the glasses and exclaimed through his beard: "They ought to know you, old man!"
"Not in this rig," Stirling said. "Last time I saw the Bear, I was pilot of the Mary Foster. They gammed us the other side of St. Lawrence Island. They were looking for poachers. Somebody had raided the northeast point of St. Paul's, and three hundred bachelor seals were missing."
"Fair game, I say, when you do it out beyond the three-mile limit. It's just the same as highway when it's done on the rookeries."
"That's the way I think. Marr had better take warning. It would be a short shift to McNeal's Island and a long sentence if he tried anything."
Cushner climbed out of the crow's-nest and lowered himself to the deck. Standing by the rail he watched the crew who were alert to raise a spout. Whitehouse, at a suggestion from Marr, had offered ten plugs of tobacco and two square faces of trade gin for the first blow reported.
The morning passed without any sign of whales. At two bells in the afternoon watch a second whaler wallowed by and offered the signal that she had already fastened and cut in. A dark slab of muck tuck, or blubber, was dangling from her stumpy jib boom.
Stirling knew the ship as he knew the palm of his strong hand. She was the Norwhale out of Frisco. He called down her name and pointed out her aged captain to the crew of the Pole Star.
"The luckiest man in the North!" Stirling exclaimed. "Already fastened and lookin' for more. Keep your eyes peeled to lee'ard, boys. There's an ocean of slick and plenty of signs."
The sun was rolling into the west when a stir passed through the Pole Star. A voice forward had half shouted, then died to a whisper. One lookout pointed far down to the south and east; Stirling swung his glasses and studied the wide surface of the Bering. He saw a spout which proved to be waves dashed from the weather side of a floe, and sea gulls hovering over an oily patch. He tested the direction of the wind by holding his finger aloft, and stared at the telltale which draped from the mizzen top.