A week later, after an uneventful voyage across a sea of glass, The Bedford Castle made up through a swirling tide-rip and into the fog-bound harbor of Unalaska. The soaring "goonies" that had followed them from Flattery had dropped astern at first sight of the volcanic headlands, and now countless thousands of sea-parrots fled from the ship's path, squattering away in comic terror, dragging their fat bodies across the sea as a boy skips a flat rock. It had been Captain Peasley's hope, here at the gateway of the Misty Sea, to learn something about the lay of the big ice-floes to the northward, but he was disappointed, for the season was yet too young for the revenue-cutters, and the local hunters knew nothing. Forced to rely on luck and his own skill, he steamed out again the next day, this time doubling back to the eastward and laying a cautious course along the second leg of the journey.
Once through the ragged barrier that separates the North Pacific from her sister sea, the dank breath of the Arctic smote them fairly. The breeze that wafted out from the north brought with it the chill of limitless ice-fields, and the first night found them hove-to among the outposts of that shifting desert of death which debouches out of Behring Straits with the first approach of autumn, to retreat again only at the coming of reluctant summer. From the crow's-nest the lookout stared down upon a white expanse that stretched beyond the horizon. At dawn they began their careful search, feeling their way eastward through the open lanes and tortuous passages that separated the floes, now laying-to for the northward set of the fields to clear a path before them, now stealing through some narrow lead that opened into freer waters.
The Bedford Castle was a steel hull whose sides, opposed to the jaws of the ponderous masses, would have been crushed like an eggshell in a vise. Unlike a wooden ship, the gentlest contact would have sprung her plates, while any considerable collision would have pierced her as if she had been built of paper. Appreciating to the full the peril of his slow advance, Captain Peasley did all the navigating in person; but eventually they were hemmed in so closely that for a day and a night they could do nothing but drift with the pack. In time, however, the winds opened a crevice through which they retreated to follow the outer limits farther eastward, until they were balked again.
Opposed to them were the forces of Nature, and they were wholly dependent upon her fickle favor. It might be a day, a week, a month before she would let them through, and, even when the barrier began to yield, another ship, a league distant, might profit by an opening which to them was barred. For a long, dull period the voyagers lay as helpless as if in dry-dock, while wandering herds of seals barked at them or bands of walruses ceased their fishing and crept out upon the ice-pans to observe these invaders of their peace. When an opportunity at last presented itself, they threaded their way southward, there to try another approach, and another, and another, until the first of May had come and gone, leaving them but little closer to their goal than when they first hove-to. Late one evening they discerned smoke on the horizon, and the next morning's light showed a three-masted steamship fast in the ice, a few miles to the westward.
"That's The Juliet," Big George informed his companions, "one of the
North American Packers' Association tenders."
"She was loading when we left Seattle," Boyd remarked.
"It is Willis Marsh's ship, so he must be aboard," supplemented Cherry. "She's a wooden ship, and built for this business. If we don't look out he'll beat us in, after all."
"What good will that do him?" Clyde questioned. "The fish don't bite—I mean run—for sixty days yet."
Emerson and Balt merely shrugged.
To Cherry Malotte this had been a voyage of dreams; for once away from land, Boyd had become his real self again—that genial, irrepressible self she had seen but rarely—and his manner had lost the restraint and coolness which recently had disturbed their relations. Of necessity their cramped environment had thrown them much together, and their companionship had been most pleasant. She and Boyd had spent long hours together, during which his light-heartedness had rivalled that of Alton Clyde—hours wherein she had come to know him more intimately and to feel that he was growing to a truer understanding of herself. She realized beyond all doubt that for him there was but one woman in all the world, yet the mere pleasure of being near him was an anodyne for her secret distress. Womanlike, she took what was offered her and strove unceasingly for more.