Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/66

62 of small subangular pieces from a few feet in diameter to an inch or two, which have been broken off all kinds of larger pieces during their battle with the wind and sea and with one another.

In the autumn, especially with the increasingly stormy weather, the pack ice is jammed up together. Irregular pieces of all sizes and shapes are huddled together: fragments of the new floe of the previous year, fragments of hummocky ice, fragments of ice that have been thickened by the frosts of two or three winters, fragments of over-ridden floes, bergy bits broken off icebergs, and brash ice. All this ice, each piece different from its neighbour, is driven together by the wind and sea, and is formed into "streams" of ice, which always lie at right angles to the wind and which may be many miles in length. Loose pieces of ice in the open sea, on the weather side of these "streams," are driven before the wind more quickly than the stream itself, and are ultimately driven into the stream and form part of it. Pieces on the lee side, however, do not readily get driven off, as they are protected from wind and sea by the whole breadth of the stream, thus the stream increases in size. The stream which lies farthest to windward drives faster and is driven on to the stream under its lee. Stream joins stream, and as