midst of the ocean. Through these openings between
the fields the ship was immediately steered, and we were soon surrounded
by ice on every side. To the south, whence we had come, there was in an
hour or so apparently just as much ice as there was before us to the
north, or to the right and left of us,--a vast immeasurable waste of ice
it was, looking dreary and frightful enough, I can assure you.

"I have said that the pieces of ice now about us were called 'floes,' or
ice-fields; the whole together was called 'the pack.' We were now in
perfectly smooth water, for you will easily understand that the ice
which we had passed broke the swell of the sea. But the crew of the ship
did not give themselves much concern about the ice itself; for it was
soon discovered that the floes were covered in many places with seals.

"Now you must understand that seals are not fish, but are air-breathing,
warm-blooded animals, like horses and cows, and therefore they must
always have their heads, or at least their noses, out of water when they
breathe. When the weather is cold, they remain in the water all the
time, merely putting up their noses now and then (for they can remain a
long time under water without breathing) to sniff a little fresh air,
and then going quickly down again. In the warm weather, however, they
come up bodily out of the sea, and bask and go to sleep in the sun,
either on the land or on the ice. Many thousands of them are often seen
together.

"As we came farther and farther into the 'pack,' the seals on the ice
were observed to be more and more numerous. Most of them appeared to be
sound asleep; some of them were wriggling about, or rolling themselves
over and over, while none of them seemed to have the least idea that we
had come all the way from New Bedford to rob them of their sleek coats
and their nice fat blubber.

"We were now fairly into our 'harvest-field,' and when a suitable place
was discovered the ship was brought up into the wind, that is, the helm
was so turned as to bring the ship's head towards the wind, when of
course the sails got 'aback,' and the ship stopped. Then a boat was
lowered, and a crew, of which I was one, got into it, with the end of a
very long rope, and we pulled away towards the edge of a large
ice-field, hauling out the rope after us, of course, from the coil on
shipboard. As we approached the ice, the seals near by all became
frightened, and floundered into the sea as quickly