"Not much, sir--only a stream; but there is an ice-blink right ahead all
along the horizon."

"How's her head, Mr. Bolton?"

"Nor'-west and by north, sir."

Before this brief conversation came to a close, Fred Ellice and Tom
Singleton sprang up the companion ladder, and stood on the deck gazing
ahead with feelings of the deepest interest. Both youths were well read
in the history of Polar Seas and Regions; they were well acquainted, by
name at least, with floes, and bergs, and hummocks of ice, but neither
of them had seen such in reality. These objects were associated in their
young minds with all that was romantic and wild, hyperborean and polar,
brilliant and sparkling, and light and white--emphatically _white_. To
behold ice actually floating on the salt sea was an incident of note in
their existence; and certainly the impressions of their first day in the
ice remained sharp, vivid, and prominent, long after scenes of a much
more striking nature had faded from the tablets of their memories.

At first the prospect that met their ardent gaze was not calculated to
excite excessive admiration. There were only a few masses of low ice
floating about in various directions. The wind was steady, but light,
and seemed as if it would speedily fall altogether. Gradually the
_blink_ on the horizon (as the light haze always distinguishable above
ice, or snow-covered land, is called) resolved itself into a long white
line of ice, which seemed to grow larger as the ship neared it, and in
about two hours more they were fairly in the midst of the pack, which
was fortunately loose enough to admit of the vessel being navigated