Stirling stared about him blankly. He felt as if the planks of the ship were slipping from under his feet. Eagan, from all reports, was a government spy. Now he was siding with the captain and the wilder members of the crew who had most certainly laid him low at the beginning of the voyage.
"Repeat that!" sneered Marr, rubbing his hands. "Just turn and tell that to this crew. Tell them what you said. Tell them you're with me as well as they are. This man Stirling is trying to cheat us out of fair game. He'll be running a Sunday school, next. I know his breed—afraid of the law! What law is north of 53?"
"Heaven's law!" Stirling said, sincerely. "You won't raid the rookeries if I can prevent it. Don't you know that there's only one revenue cutter in these waters? Are you going to take advantage of that fact?"
Whitehouse came across the quarter-deck, clutched Marr by the arm, and drew the captain halfway toward the wheel and the companion skylight. They whispered there as Stirling shouldered Eagan to one side, saying cuttingly: "You're with them, too? I thought you were a man!"
The sailor flushed and glanced down at the deck, then turned toward the crew. "Fight it out yourself," he said as he climbed to the lower deck.
Stirling waited for Marr to come forward, glancing longingly over the slick-covered seas. In mockery, it seemed, the whales were sporting about the silent ship. One came so close to the bow that a dropped block on the forecastle deck startled it. It was gone with a defiant toss of black flukes, and the school started toward the ice.
Whitehouse finished whispering to the captain, glided to Stirling, and grasped his arm. "The old man says to get aloft and work into the ice. Says we'll whale later. The school's gone, anyway."
The peaceful ending to what Stirling had expected would lead to a general drawing of lines aboard the ship was more than he could stand. He turned and fastened upon Marr a glance of deep determination, his fingers coiling into knots.
"Remember," the Ice Pilot said, distinctly, "I'll always be on deck. I want no double crossing."
With this shot delivered through his white teeth, Stirling moved leisurely over the deck and as he descended to the waist, one of the crew hissed. He wheeled, reached out, grasped the man by the waist and neck, and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of meal.