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 through the channels of open water.  Soon after, the sun broke out in cloudless splendour, and the wind fell entirely, leaving the ocean in a dead calm.

“Let’s go to the fore-top, Tom,” said Fred, seizing his friend by the arm and hastening to the shrouds.

In a few seconds they were seated alone on the little platform at the top of the fore-mast, just where it is connected with the fore-top-mast, and from this elevated position they gazed in silent delight upon the fairy-like scene.

Those who have never stood at the mast-head of a ship at sea in a dead calm cannot comprehend the feeling of intense solitude that fills the mind in such a position.  There is nothing analogous to it on land.  To stand on the summit of a tower and look down on the busy multitude below is not the same, for there the sounds are quite different in tone, and signs of life are visible all over the distant country, while cries from afar reach the ear, as well as those from below.  But from the mast-head you hear only the few subdued sounds under your feet—­all beyond is silence; you behold only the small, oval-shaped platform that is your world—­beyond lies the calm desolate ocean.  On deck you cannot realize this feeling, for there sails and yards tower above you, and masts, and boats, and cordage intercept your view; but from above you take in the intense minuteness of your home at a single glance—­you stand aside, as it were, and in some measure comprehend the insignificance of the thing to which you have committed your life.

The scene witnessed by our friends at the masthead of the Dolphin on this occasion was surpassingly beautiful.  Far as the eye could stretch the sea was covered with islands and fields of ice of every conceivable shape.  Some rose in little peaks and pinnacles, some floated in the form of arches and domes, some were broken and rugged like the ruins of old border strongholds, while others were flat and level like fields of white marble; and so calm was it, that the ocean in which they floated seemed like a groundwork of polished steel, in which the sun shone with dazzling brilliancy.  The tops of the icy islets were pure white, and the sides of the higher ones of a delicate blue colour, which gave to the scene a transparent lightness that rendered it pre-eminently fairy-like.