I was bound for Brandelhow to meet the woodman to discuss the felling of certain timber, and through the ice pack, if it were possible, I must needs go. Coasting along round the island, I soon found myself in a narrow inlet of water that stretched half across the lake; tiny spikules of ice that seemed like floating straws were right and left of me in the still water; here and there little delicate {209} fans of ice were passed. These miniature ice-islands were the nuclei round which the freezing mixture would crystallise. Forward across towards Lingholme I steered, and suddenly should have been brought up sharp had not the boat, with good way upon it, crashed right into the ice-floe and shown me how unsubstantial a thing this first ice-covering of the lake was. With every stroke of the oar the boat forged its way with marvellous sound of crash and gride, and one remembered how the Ancient Mariner had heard those 'noises in a swound,' and was able to summon up something of the roar with which the great ice-breakers or steam rams on the Neva crash their way up and down the river to keep the waterway clear for the Baltic shipping. But in a short time the difficulty of rowing became doubled, and if it had not been that one saw clear water ahead one would hardly have ventured forward. Meanwhile in the wake of one's boat one saw how swiftly the little ice-elves repaired the damage one had done by bringing back to its own place and rest each fragment one had displaced, and piecing over with exquisite exactness the breach that one had made. Now the way was clear, for by some {210} mysterious reason, known only to the water-gods, the shallower the water became as one went shoreward the freer it was of ice. It may have been mere fantasy, but it seemed as if the water so near to freezing was semi-fluid, viscous; always right and left of one swam by the little ice spikules, and the ice fans, with irridescent beauty, floated and shone hard by. Presently another crash was heard, and an ice-belt, only a yard wide, but stretching fifty or sixty yards along, was crashed through, another and another, and so, with alternate noise and silence, one made one's way to Victoria Point, and ran the boat ashore at Brandelhow.