The pall which lay around the Pole Star was like an ultramarine depth. The narrow circle of visible waters rose and fell sullenly, while aloft the taper spars merged into the mist. Now and then a grinding jerk of the anchor chain sent a vibrating shudder from stem to jack staff. Below the holystoned decks the watch snored, unaware that the tide hung at its flood and that a wan yellow sun was rising over the Coast Range like a paper lantern in a summer's garden.

Stirling moved restlessly, his eyes opened like a quiet child's, and he surveyed his cabin. The events of the night and the early morning rushed back to him, and he blinked as he caught a reflection of his face in a white-bordered mirror at the head of the bunk.

He sprang to the deck, ducked his head in a basin, tested the taps, then dried himself with a thick towel. Staring about, he found his clothes hanging from hooks on the ship's sheathing. Donning the clothes, he opened the door and strode out into an alleyway which led to the waist of the ship. He lifted his eyes to the mist as he emerged upon the damp planks and sniffed the morning air.

"Howdy!" exclaimed Cushner from a position at the rail. "About time you're risin'. We're going to yank the mudhook up as soon as Marr gives the order."

Stirling dropped his eyes and stepped to the mate's side. Staring over the rail, he raised his finger, sniffed for a second time, then declared: "She'll be clear by noon. This fog is light."

Cushner led the way forward to the ornate forecastle and Stirling glanced down through the open booby hatch, to where a row of bunks lined each side of the ship. In these bunks seamen slept with their arms over their faces and their legs extended. A molasses barrel was lashed to the heel of the foremast, and on top of this barrel stood a large pan of white bread. The entire forecastle struck Stirling as far too clean and too large for a whaler's. It was more like an expensive yacht's.

"Them's picked men!" said Cushner. "Some has been picked from the gutter and some from the boarding houses. I guess I'll wake them. It's time for both watches on deck."

The second mate lifted a belaying pin from the pinrail and pounded upon the deck like a policeman pounds on the pavement. "Rise and shine, lads!" he shouted, leaning over the companion's coaming. "We've got to pay Paddy Doyle for his boots. All out!"

Cushner listened and then repeated his tapping. "All hands on deck!" he called. "Step lively now, men! It's five bells an' th' tide is turning!"

Stirling heard protests from the sleepy crew; shoes flew across the forecastle, pans banged, growls and feeble protests rose as the two watches gathered together their clothes and attempted to dress in the dark.

"Coffee they get," said Cushner. "Coffee and eggs and plum duff and white bread and bully beef. They're lucky. In my day we chewed hardtack and drank bilge water. Whaling has changed!"

Stirling nodded, and raised his eyes to the rigging of the Pole Star, where spar varnish glistened from yards and masts, and snow-white canvas looped downward like lingerie on clotheslines. The running rigging was of new hemp. It all struck him as a dream as he turned and strode to the rail by the port-anchor davit.

"See here," he said to Cushner. "I doubt if there's a finer sea boat afloat, but how about the ice? She's sheathed, but with wood. She ought to have a steel plate forward."

The big second mate grinned. "She's a good ice ship, Stirling," he said, leaning over the rail and pointing downward. "That's teakwood and yew. There's nothing better, and it don't impede her speed to any extent. You ought to have been aboard coming up from Sandy Point—eleven point five for days at a stretch. She'll do thirteen under forced draft. She'll do two more knots with the wind abeam. That's six-day boat speed!"

Stirling shook his head. He had been accustomed to blunt-bowed whalers with solid planking forward and steel sheathing aft to the waist. It was the only construction he knew of which would stand the grind of the Northern ice floes.

"Take a look at the whaleboats!" said Cushner. "Simpkins, of Dundee, built them. They're mahogany trimmed. You don't often see that."

Stirling climbed the lee fore shrouds and grasped a white boat's rail where it swung from polished davits just aft the break of the forepeak, and peered inside. The whaling gear was all in place; he counted two tubs of whale line which was carefully protected by new tarpaulins. The oars were fully sixteen feet in length, and paddles were racked beneath the seats. A mast and boom—harpoons, lances, bomb guns, blubber spades, bailing dippers—lay in position between the centerboard well and the skin of the boat.

"Good equipment!" he declared, dropping to the deck with a light rebound. "They'll do. Wouldn't wonder if we have some sport this voyage. Last season was a bad one. It ain't natural for two bad years to run together. They take turns about—watch and watch."

"She's well outfitted, Stirling. Thar ain't no better ship going North this season. You ought to drop down into the engine room and see that triple-expansion dream. Baldwin and Maddox say it's one of the finest engines ever turned out of Clyde-bank. Russia bought good stuff in the early days. She had the money then!"

Stirling stared aft to the deck house, out of which sleepy-eyed Kanakas and boat steerers were appearing, then stepped to one rail and studied the swinging sheer of the Pole Star. He saw beyond the smoke of the cook's stovepipe the swinging lift of the quarter-deck. Upon this a figure strode from rail to rail. It was Marr.

"How about that woman?" The question dropped from Stirling's lips as he turned toward the Yankee second mate.

"Your guess is as good as mine. I didn't know Marr had any woman in view when he dropped anchor in this port. There's a kind of a law against women going North in whalers, ain't there?"

"The owners don't allow it! But then Marr is an owner. He could do anything."

Cushner stroked his beard. He twirled its point. "I heard voices on deck last night," he said with reserve. "I'm willin' to venture five plugs of tobacco that one was a woman's voice. Maybe she came out to say good-bye to the skipper. Maybe she didn't. Maybe it's his wife."

Stirling reached in the pocket of his pea-jacket and fished out a plug of select tobacco. "I don't often chew," he said, "but I'll bet this plug against another that it wasn't a woman's voice you heard."

"You're on!" exclaimed the mate. "It was a woman's voice. She went below, and she's aboard now. Time will fetch her out. Marr is as close-mouthed as an oyster. She's some relation; that's sure!"

Stirling pocketed the plug, folded his arms, and stood smiling before the big mate. He shook his head. "I'll win that plug," he said, sincerely. "I'm a simple man, Cushner. It don't stand to reason that Marr would bring a woman on a whaling trip. If he's figuring on going to Disko Island and the Siberian coast it would be dangerous. Those are desperate seas!"

"Here's the watches!" exclaimed the second mate. "Let's stir our stumps and get the ship out, smart-like. We'll forget the lady till you see for your own eyes. Likely she's pretty."

Stirling snorted, his mind running back to his only love affair. It was merged in the failure of a chicken farm over Oakland way. A widow had cast eyes at the farm until the chickens began to pass away. This widow had often dwelt upon the happiness of married life. Stirling, still in his late forties, had thought long and seriously over the matter. He was a man's man, and felt that women, and particularly dashing widows, belonged to another sphere. They were as much out of his life as the stars that floated in the heavens—as remote as the centre of the antarctic continent. He had sailed the Northern seas too long and far to allow his mind to dwell upon the land as a final anchorage to his ambitions.

He made his way aft to the wheel while the mate lunged forward and joined the group upon the forecastle head. Marr stood close by the binnacle, and just then turned to the wheelsman.

"Stand ready," he said, raising his eyes to Stirling's. "You take charge," he added, smiling faintly as the Ice Pilot shot a keen glance upward where the morning sun was breaking through the last of the mist. "The deck is yours, Mr. Stirling. Mr. Whitehouse will go forward and join Mr. Cushner."

Stirling squared his shoulders and braced his legs.

The little skipper, spick and span in blue pea-jacket and well-cut trousers, strode briskly to the quarter-deck rail and leaned over.

"Steam on the winch!" he shouted. "Lively now, men!"

A racking grind sounded, and the iron teeth of the winch swallowed the rusty chain like a giant biting a meal. The ship steadied in the tide which was flowing through the Golden Gate as the anchor lifted from the mud and silt of the bay.

"All's clear!" Cushner called over the whaleboats.

"Hard aport!" said Stirling, sensing the position. "Put her hard aport. Now up a spoke! More! Steady there!"

Marr reached for the engine-room telegraph, a bell clanged below, the single screw thrashed the water astern and the Pole Star rounded on a long arc, gliding down the bay to a position off Meigg's Wharf.

A pilot and the last papers were brought out in a revenue cutter as Stirling kept the ship under bare headway. The siren aft the funnel plumed into one short blast, and they were off on the first leg of the passage to the Arctic and the Bering Sea.

Foghorn and whistle sounded in cadence, and was answered from starboard and port. Once a bell rang directly ahead through the fog. The engines raced in reverse, and the Pole Star swung with her dainty jib boom groping through the fog like an antenna. She straightened under the pilot's directions.

The veil thinned, as the sun struck through, bringing out the clean-cut details of the yards and spars. A stagelike setting appeared. To port lay the city—hill after hill of close-packed habitations; to starboard reared the green slopes of the Coast Range and the higher land of Mount Tamalpais. Beyond and directly ahead the sun kissed the sparkling ocean.

The Pole Star glided under the frowning guns of the Presidio, and danced across the bar. The Cliff House and the seal rocks were thrown astern. The land of California sank to a low, black line after the pilot had been dropped upon the deck of a tossing kicker yacht.