Now, if our ship had timbers they would crack, and if she had a bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury.

With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with the water.

This is "the pack," the edge of a great ice-field broken by the swell.

It is a perilous and an exciting thing to push through pack ice in a gale.
Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field." Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of water." Shall we go on?
Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible.

With sledges and portable boats they laboured on through snow and over hummocks, launching their boats over the larger holes of water.