"Any more?" he asked, grimly.
No man of them offered himself though Stirling waited with his glance taking in the rough circle. He dropped his fingers, moved slowly to the rail and up the shrouds he climbed till he reached the crow's-nest. Standing on the edge of this, he rimmed the ice pack from horizon to horizon.
"One bell!" he called down. "All hands stand by braces. Three of you come aloft and loosen sail."
The ship sprang with life. Whitehouse jerked the engine-room telegraph; the propeller thrashed astern; the sails dropped from the yards and were sheeted home. The taper jib boom swung toward the open lane to the north and east and ice floes ground under the stem.
For two watches Stirling remained aloft, calling down his orders in a strong voice. He knew the ice as few men were ever gifted to know it, and took advantage of all his experience. He held the course through the lane until, balked, he drove across a sea of slush and thin ice and crashed the way open to still another pathway to the north.
The Pribilofs, already green with moss and spring verdure, were sighted at sundown. A low shed marked the sealing station where the bachelor seals had been skinned in days gone by, and a flag flew from a pole at the side of the Commissioner's house. Its bars of white and red cheered Stirling. It was the emblem of his country in the Northern seas.
No other ships showed within the ice field; Stirling had taken chances lesser pilots feared. He drove north and east under steam and canvas, saving the ship from being crushed a score of times. He announced quietly upon the fourth day that East Cape lay ahead, and pointed over the bow. Marr, on the quarter-deck, clapped Whitehouse across the shoulders, and the mate grinned and danced over the planks.
The massive solemnity of the great headland, as it rose above the ice field, held every eye aboard the whaler. It was the farthermost point east and north of the Siberian continent. Near the foot of the Cape nestled a native village.
"Indian Point?" asked Marr, glaring upward at Stirling.
The Ice Pilot nodded as he guided the ship through the last of the shore ice and ordered the anchor dropped in a sheltered nook. The rattle of the chain in the hawser hole awoke echoes within the cliff; Indian canoes in the shape of hair-sealskin umiaks and kayaks darted out to meet them, and other boats flecked the Straits of Bering, coming down with the wind and current from East Cape.