94 THE SEA. 



scnted by huge mushrooms with broad drooping tops, supported on a single slender stem, 

 and great masses of ice-foliage that crowned groups of beautifully-carved columns, like 

 immense bread-fruit trees, covered with ice. There were swans with long slender necks 

 gracefully poised in the water; there were dragons, lions, eagles; in short, almost every 

 fantastic form that could be imagined, sparkling and gleaming in the bright morning 

 sun. In the path of the vessel great flat pieces, or floes, presented themselves, and grew 

 closer and thicker together, with but very narrow channels of water between them. At 

 last they came to a place where there was no passage at all, unless they went two or 

 three miles out of their route. 



Toms, the old gunner, who was out with Captain Young in the Fox, was on the 

 bridge conducting the vessePs course, and instead of going around they drove straight at 

 the floe. What had been taken by some on board for a solid field of ice was in reality two 

 large floes joined together at one spot, and thus forming a narrow isthmus only a few 

 feet wide. It was this isthmus that old Toms was going to charge. The wind in the 

 course of the morning had sprung up from the east, and they had it, consequently, on the 

 starboard quarter. The Pandora was coming smoothly along under reefed topsails, at the 

 rate of about five knots. In a moment her prow plunged into the ice with the force of 

 a battering-ram. There was a loud crash; the ship quivered and shook; the masts, with 

 the sails pulling at them, bent and creaked; the ice rolled up before her in great blocks, 

 that fell splashing in the water, and the Pandora stopped quite still for the moment, com- 

 pletely jammed. But it was for a moment only. Her sharp iron prow had quite demolished 

 the neck of ice, and it only remained to squeeze herself between the floes into clear water 

 beyond. She wriggled through like an eel, and then shot gaily forward, as though eager 

 for another encounter. 



" That was rather a hard bump, Toms, wasn't it ? " said somebody. 



"Oh, bless you! that's nothing," replied the old sea-dog, with a smile. "We'll have 

 harder ones nor that before we gets through the north-west passage." And so they did, 

 as the narrative abundantly shows. 



The seals, with their round smooth heads just barely above the surface, are described 

 as looking like plum-puddings floating in the water. As they had been living on salt pro- 

 visions for twenty days, a great longing for fresh meat came over them. Seal's liver with 

 bacon is said to form an excellent dish. On one occasion they had nearly killed a seal, 

 when a man was sent after it to finish the business. His weight, when he arrived on the 

 floe, broke the ice, and both fell in together. The seal was lost, but happily the sailor was 

 rescued. Later they were more successful. The officers took to the seal-flesh most kindly, 

 but the sailors were by far too dainty to feed on such unusual food. It is a ciirious fact 

 that men on Arctic expeditions will often refuse to touch seal or walrus meat, as well as 

 preserved or tinned beef and mutton. The result is the scurvy, which often enough proves 

 fatal. 



Captain Young, on the way up to Ivigtut, a little Danish settlement on the west 

 coast of Greenland, brought his vessel alongside a large floe on which five seals were 

 observed, apparently asleep. Thirty gun-barrels were soon levelled on the hapless animals, 

 which lay quite still as the ship came up, apparently unconscious of their danger. 



