"Very likely, Johnson; but the difficulty will be to get to Melville Bay; see how thick the ice is about us! The Forward can hardly make her way through it. See there, that huge expanse!"
"We whalers call that an ice-field, that is to say, an unbroken surface of ice, the limits of which cannot be seen."
"And what do you call this broken field of long pieces more or less closely connected?"
"That is a pack; if it's round we call it a patch, and a stream if it is long."
"And that floating ice?"
"That is drift-ice; if a little higher it would be icebergs; they are very dangerous to ships, and they have to be carefully avoided. See, down there on the ice-field, that protuberance caused by the pressure of the ice; we call that a hummock; if the base were under water, we should call it a cake; we have to give names to them all to distinguish them."
"Ah, it is a strange sight," exclaimed the doctor, as he gazed at the wonders of the northern seas; "one's imagination is touched by all these different shapes!"
"True," answered Johnson, "the ice takes sometimes such curious shapes; and we men never fail to explain them in our own way."