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We rejoiced that there was again water beneath our keel, and that we might again negotiate a righted deck, but, by morning, as the ice closed in, almost invisibly forming, Ehn by Ehn, hort by half-hort, our joy turned to terror, for one could remark the groaning of timbers, the cracking of stressed beams. - (Mariners of Gor, Chapter 8, Sentence #34)

This had proved fortunate for, as later became clear, the massive press of ice on each side might snap apart even timbers as fearsome as those of the great ship of Tersites, might break them apart as easily as a child might snap the twigs of a play fortress. Thassa had reserves on which she might draw, the vast pressures of her solidifying surface. Twenty days ago the ice had shifted, with a great, splitting roar, and our great, weighty bulk had slid downward, deeper into the ice, then through the ice, and righted itself. We rejoiced that there was again water beneath our keel, and that we might again negotiate a righted deck, but, by morning, as the ice closed in, almost invisibly forming, Ehn by Ehn, hort by half-hort, our joy turned to terror, for one could remark the groaning of timbers, the cracking of stressed beams. "Do nothing!" had cried Tersites. "The ship is strong! She will neither bend nor break. Mightier than Thassa is she, my ship, always, in every way, do nothing!" But the ice, like the forge pliers of a Metal Worker, slowly, little by little, began to close on the wood. - (Mariners of Gor)