h just as soon as we can, but I guess that's
not quite what you mean."

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

"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 that I'm not
sure about. If there's ice we mayn't fetch the creek, where we'd figured
on laying her up. 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 with which they had grappled at
many a council. The men for whom they searched might have gone either
north or south, or they might have gone inland, if, indeed, any of them
survived.

"If we only knew how they had 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 assented. "They'd have no use for fetching up
among the Russians, and there's nobody else until you get to Japan. No
white men, anyway. 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 traveler, 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 sealers. 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 Pribilofs. It was admitted that the Americans 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 from
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," answered the helmsman. "