The Ice Pilot raised his brows and closed his mouth in a firm line. The mate had revealed another side of his character. He had come down into the waist of the ship in order to make an inspection, and was returning like a man who expected to meet with a cheerful welcome. Perhaps, decided Stirling, he had gone aft and below in order to create an impression. The impression could hardly be made upon Marr. That little skipper was no more interested in whaling than in cob fishing. He had treated the entire chase of the day as a diversion which would answer until the ice opened and allowed the Pole Star to drive northward toward some coast where bigger game was waiting.
The morning dawned, warm, gray, and cloud-shrouded. An east wind swung over the North pack and loosened the lighter floes. They drifted toward the south, as the seals gave the warning of the first breaking up of the ice, and loud reports were heard to windward.
Stirling rolled from his bunk and sniffed the air, pressed his face to a porthole, then rapidly dressed. Taking coffee from the galley boy, he hurried to the deck and stared about him. The ship was hove to in a position that commanded a view of the pack ice and the sea to the south and west.
Climbing hand over hand, Stirling reached the Jacob's ladder, and then the crow's-nest. He settled down and clapped the glasses to his eyes.
A voice rose from the quarter-deck, and increased in volume as Stirling still stared to leeward.
"Aloft, there!" Marr shouted, angrily. "Hey, you aloft!"
Stirling leisurely removed the glasses from his eyes and glanced downward. He said nothing.
"How's the ice?" asked the skipper, jerking his thumb toward the north and east. "What do you make of it?"
Stirling turned and lifted the glasses. "She's breaking," he called. "I see a few lanes to the east. This wind will clear things in a day or two. We can go then!"
Marr paced the deck, bringing up against the rail on the ice side of the ship. "We'll go now!" he shouted. "Right now, if there's any possible route open. I want to be at Indian Point within the week. Can you do it?"