In the Great White Land by Gordon Stables

When the _Walrus_, in the shortening days of autumn, had steamed slowly into Incognita Bay, she had to force her way through the pancake ice with which the whole extent of the water was covered. Flat pieces these are, probably no more than a foot thick, covered of course with several inches of snow, and with an average diameter of, say, eight feet. They are really the _débris_ of a baby-floe which the waves, raised by some far-off gale of wind, have broken up. The snow-edge all around them is raised by the constant contact of the pieces of ice with one another, and this gives them a fancied resemblance to gigantic pancakes. Hence their name.

But soon after the _Walrus_ had anchored, the sky had cleared, and in the dead, unbroken silence of an early winter, they were frozen together by strong bay-ice. Then snow had fallen and fallen and fallen, with never a breath of wind strong enough to lift one feathery flake, till, on looking out over the bulwarks one morning after the decks had been cleared, and the sun was shining again, lo! the whole surface of the bay was one unbroken, unwrinkled sheet of dazzling snow.