“How glorious!” exclaimed the youth, as he swept his sparkling eye round the horizon. “Ah, Croft! is not this splendid?”
“So it is, sir,” said the seaman, turning the large quid of tobacco that bulged out his left cheek. “It’s very beautiful, no doubt, but it’s comin’ rather thick for my taste.”
“How so?” inquired Gregory. “There seems to me plenty of open water to enable us to steer clear of these masses. Besides, as we have no wind, it matters little, I should think, whether we have room to sail or not.”
“You’ve not seed much o’ the ice yet, that’s plain,” said Croft, “else you’d know that the floes are closin’ round us, an’ we’ll soon be fast in the pack, if a breeze don’t spring up to help us.”
As the reader may not, perhaps, understand the terms used by Arctic voyagers in regard to the ice in its various forms, it may be as well here to explain the meaning of those most commonly used.
When ice is seen floating in small detached pieces and scattered masses, it is called “floe” ice, and men speak of getting among the floes. When these floes close up, so that the whole sea seems to be covered with them, and little water can be seen, it is called “pack” ice. When the pack is squeezed together, so that lumps of it are forced up in the form of rugged mounds, these mounds are called “hummocks.” A large mass of flat ice, varying from one mile to many miles in extent, is called a “field,” and a mountain of ice is called a “berg.”
All the ice here spoken of, except the berg, is sea-ice; formed by the freezing of the ocean in winter. The berg is formed in a very different manner. Of this more shall be said in a future chapter.
“Well, my lad,” said Gregory, in reply to Jim Croft’s last observation, “I have not seen much of the ice yet, as you truly remark, so I hope that the wind will not come to help us out of it for some time. You don’t think it dangerous to get into the pack, do you?”
“Well, not exactly dangerous, sir,” replied Croft, “but I must say that it aint safe, ’specially when there’s a swell on like this. But that’ll go down soon. D’ye know what a nip is, Dr Gregory?”
“I think I do; at least I have read of such a thing. But I should be very glad to hear what you have to say about it. No doubt you have felt one.”