This, of course, is the game that we play with clouds, or with ‘pictures in the fire’. If there is an infinite number of plastic shapes, whether of vapour, of glowing coal or of ice, some will, fortuitously, resemble things we know…
It is easy enought o say that of course all this was mere coincidence of fancy – a game of the imagination. This is a large lump of floating ice. In another few hours its shape would have changed and the likeness would have vanished. Believe me, reader, if you had stood on deck in that freezing solitude, gazed up at those glassy, blue towers and through that icy arch, and reflected that it was only by mere chance that any human eyes happened to see it at all, you would find it easy (as we did) very hard to dismiss lightly. It was like a castle deserted and bewitched – all turned to ice…(Adams, Richard and Lockley, Ronald, Voyage through the Antarctic, 1983)
Voices from the Southern Ocean