he intends to take the ship."

"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!"

[Illustration]

"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."

[Illustration]

"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."

"See there, Johnson; see that singular collection of blocks of ice!
Would one not say it was a foreign city, an Eastern city, with
minarets and mosques in the moonlight? Farther off is a long row of
Gothic arches, which remind us of the chapel of Henry VII., or the
Houses of Parliament."

[Illustration: "Would one not say it was a foreign city, an Eastern
city, with minarets and mosques in the moonlight?"]

"Everything can be found there; but those cities or churches are very
dangerous, and we must not go too near them. Some of those minarets
are tottering, and the smallest of them would crush a ship like the
_Forward_."

"And yet men have dared to come into these seas under sail alone! How
could a ship be trusted in such perils without the aid of steam?"

"Still it has been done; when the wind is unfavorable, and I have
known that happen more than once, it is usual to anchor to one of
these blocks of ice; we should float more or less around with them,
but we would wait for a fair wind; it is true that, travelling in that
way, months would be sometimes wasted where we shall need only a few
days."

[Illustration]

"It seems to me," said the doctor, "that the temperature is falling."

"That would be a p