you mean."

"No," admitted Wyllard. "I meant for the next few hours or so. In a
general way, we're still pushing on."

"Then I'm not worrying much about pushing her through. That ice is
light and scattered, and as she's going it won't hurt her much if she
plugs some in the dark. It's what we're going to do the next two weeks
I'm not sure about. If there's ice we mayn't fetch the creek the chart
shows where we'd figured on laying her up in. It's still most a
hundred miles to the north of us. The other inlet I'd fixed on is way
further south."

This brought them back to the difficulty they had grappled with at many
a council. The men they were in search of might have gone either north
or south; or they might, though this seemed less likely, have gone
inland, if, indeed, any of them survived.

"If we only knew how they'd headed," said Wyllard quietly. "Still,
right or not, I'm for pushing on."

Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.

"I guess it's north," he said. "They'd have no use for fetching up
among the Russians, and there's nobody else until you get to Japan. No
white men, any way. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is
quite a long way."

"If you were dumped down ashore there, which way would you go?" Dampier
asked.

"If I'd a wallet full of papers certifying me as a harmless traveller,
it would be south just as hard as I could hit the trail. Guess I'd
strike somebody out prospecting, or surveying, and they'd set me along
to the Kuriles. Still, if I'd been sealing, I wouldn't head that way.
No, sir. That's dead sure."

There was a reason for this certainty, right or wrong, in the minds of
the sealermen. How many of the skins they brought home were obtained
in open water where they could fish without molestation they alone
knew; but they were regarded in certain quarters as poachers and
outlaws, who deserved no mercy. They had their differences with the
Americans who owned the Prbyloffs, but the latter, it was admitted, had
bought the islands, and might reasonably be considered to have some
claim upon the seals which frequented them. The free-lances bore their
execrations and reprisals more or less resignedly, though that did not
prevent them occasionally exchanging compliments with oar butts or
sealing clubs, but the Muscovite was a grim, mysterious figure they
feared and hated.

"Then you'd have tried up north?" Wyllard suggested.

"Sure," said the helmsman. "If I'd a