The Ice Pilot reached the deck by way of the chains in the waist, and saw that the entire crew had gathered between the galley house and the break of the poop.

Marr was with them. He wheeled, strutted over the planks, and planted himself before Stirling. "What did you find at East Cape?" he asked.

Stirling doubled his fists and stepped back. "Little or nothing," he said, glancing over the skipper's slight shoulder and meeting the eyes of the crew which seemed suddenly hostile. "Little or nothing," he repeated, simply. "There's pelts there and ivory, but no bone. I told them we had no whisky to trade."

"You did?"

Stirling flushed and backed to the rail. He heard Eagan drop to the deck beside him, and the seaman was followed by the two sailors who had made the trip to East Cape.

"I did!"

"Don't you know that this crew is trying to make an honest living? Don't you know that every brave man aboard gets a two hundredth lay of the bone we trade or capture? Why didn't you try the natives with a little whisky bait? You'd have found bone hidden in every igloo."

"Go yourself!" said Stirling. "I won't do your dirty work!"

Marr turned to the half-moon of menacing men. "You heard that," he said. "That's the kind of man this pilot is—all for himself. I told you we'd have to look out for him. We can't go on any further until he is taken care of."

The crew had reached some sort of agreement before Stirling arrived from East Cape; this much he saw with widening eyes, glancing from face to face. The Kanakas had been chosen for their loyalty to the little skipper. The boat steerers were Frisco dock rats who had the run of the steerage—an elevated position to them. The rest of the crew had scant hopes for anything save plunder and spoils in this life. They would have willingly followed Marr through the entire group of rookeries, starting at Disko Island and winding up at the Pribilofs.

Stirling reached and rested his hand on the pinrail, where were a dozen brass belaying pins. He lifted his hand, wound his fingers about the nearest, and raised it an inch or more. A tenseness of desperate right steeled his muscles; his jaw muscles hardened to balls, and his lips closed in a grim line.

Marr reached backward and clapped his palm over his right hip. The motion was a signal. The crew snarled in a running line of anger, advanced in a half-circle, and closed about Stirling. One held a sheath knife openly displayed in his hand.

"Kill the squealer!" he exclaimed. "Kill him! He's preventing us from getting what's coming on this voyage. Darn, says I, if I'll go to Frisco broke. What d'ye say, mates?"

"Hold on!" cried Stirling, raising his ponderous right fist. "The first man who tries anything gets this!"

Eagan stepped out from the rail a half step, and stood partly between Stirling and the little skipper. There was that written in the seaman's face which held every man upon the ship. His eyes glittered with high light, and his body rested on the balls of his feet as if to spring.

"A moment!" Eagan snapped in steeled tones. "This layout will lead to murder. Murder leads to swingin'. I don't want to swing. I'm with the skipper in every way. Get that?"

The crew glanced at each face before them—Stirling's strong, but uncertain; Eagan's masterful; Marr's openly sneering.

"We get it," a sailor answered back.

"Then, I suggest we all go slow. This Stirling has been cracking too much about whisky and seals. He's liable to see too much and say too many things afterward. You get me, don't you?"

"We get you."

"On the other hand," continued Eagan, "there's the danger of messing the whole voyage up. If we croak this fellow, it'll get out and we'll have to pay. If we maroon him anywhere along this coast, he'll find a way to signal that cruiser that went north, or the Bear."

"How about an island?" a boat steerer asked.

"That's it!" declared Eagan, dropping his hand. "We'll put him on an island after we get done with the little trip the captain has planned for us. That island will be in the North Pacific. We can pick out a nice, quiet one."

Stirling, with fist still ready for action, turned toward Eagan and exclaimed: "You're with them, eh?"

"Certainly; all the way! You're one against thirty—more than that, counting the engine-room force and the stokehold bunch. Put down that fist and get into your cabin; stay there and don't come on deck. Otherwise they're going to mop up the ship with you."

"I'll chance that——" started Stirling, advancing upon the crew, both fists now clenched.

He never hesitated in the charge. It was bull strong and intended to clear the way to the poop; men went over as ninepins; blows glanced from his shoulders. He reached the poop steps with arms twined about him, threw these off with a savage twist and squirm, and went up as a Kanaka harpooner seized his legs. Dragging slowly, he grasped the rail and bent his body.

It was then that a belaying pin flew across the waist of the ship, glanced from the quarter-deck rail, and struck Stirling in the temple. He rolled down the steps—the centre of a snarling pack of men—then lay quiet, with blood flowing from the wound in his head.

Eagan pulled off the pack and lifted him like a heavy sack of meal. "I'll put him in his cabin," he said with a grunt. "I'll watch him. Leave that part to me."

Marr turned and faced the crew. "Get the anchor up!" he ordered. "We'll drop down the wind and make for our landfall. Remember, we're looking for bowheads until I give other instructions."

Eagan laid Stirling on his bunk and went to work. He found water and a clean towel, bathed the swollen wound, leaned over, and shook Stirling into consciousness.

"Lay low!" he whispered. "Don't you know who I am?"

Stirling rolled, and pressed his hand to his eyes. "I don't know," he said, weakly. "Who are you?"

Eagan reached into his pocket and drew forth a gold badge. He held it before Stirling's swimming eyes.

"I am a Deputy Seal Commissioner," said the seaman.