blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging motion of a
great river cataract. Tracing it down three or four miles, I found that
it discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.

I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day
was already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the
return trip to get off the ice before dark. I decided therefore to go
no farther, and, after taking a general view of the wonderful region,
turned back, hoping to see it again under more favorable auspices. We
made good speed up the cañon of the great ice-torrent, and out on the
main glacier until we had left the west shore about two miles behind us.
Here we got into a difficult network of crevasses, the gathering clouds
began to drop misty fringes, and soon the dreaded snow came flying thick
and fast. I now began to feel anxious about finding a way in the
blurring storm. Stickeen showed no trace of fear. He was still the same
silent, able little hero. I noticed, however, that after the
storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me. The snow urged us to
make still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way. I pushed on
as best I could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred
rods or so of direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down in
the turmoil of chasms and dislocated ice-blocks. After an hour or two of
this work we came to a series of longitudinal crevasses of appalling
width, and almost straight and regular in trend, like immense furrows.
These I traced with firm nerve, excited and strengthened by the danger,
making wide jumps, poising cautiously on their dizzy edges after
cutting hollows for my feet before making the spring, to avoid possible
slipping or any uncertainty on the farther sides, where only one trial
is granted--exercise at once frightful and inspiring. Stickeen followed
seemingly without effort.