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Suggested answer: “As the ship’s crew scurried in panic, the iceberg swiftly closed on the research vessel till the glacial fragment plastered the vessel with a glistening roar.”

There is no shortage of verbs beginning with “p”. In respect to a waterborne vessel being struck by an iceberg, some verbs spring to mind: pierced, punctured, penetrated, pricked, and so on. In writing that the ship was “plastered” by the iceberg, the writer was being faithful to the description of the initial collision, which was described as “a glistening roar.” In other words, the iceberg’s impact was loud and threw up a sheet of water and shards of ice that “glistened.” Thus, the side of the ship was “plastered” with shiny water as well as “plastered” in the sense of being grievously struck. The lesson is to look at a whole sentence in choosing a verb.
以「p」開頭的動詞不少，提到水上遭冰山撞擊的船舶，腦海自然浮現「pierced」（刺穿）、「punctured」（戳穿）、「penetrated」（穿透）、「pricked」（貫穿）等動詞。不過作者卻用「plastered」（覆蓋、猛烈撞擊）一詞，忠實呈現一開始的撞擊，描述為「a glistening roar」（閃耀的巨響），也就是說，冰山撞上船隻發出巨響，激起大片閃耀的水花與碎冰，船隻不僅遭到「猛烈撞擊」（plastered），一側也「覆蓋」（plastered）了閃閃發亮的水花。從這個例子可以知道，選擇動詞必須考量整個句子。