Thin waves of laughter mingled with them from time to time, growing
faint behind me, then the distance closed up between us and I heard no
more.

The steamer had landed about thirty passengers and crew, and they
seemed immediately lost in these vast expanses. When I had walked a
few minutes up the beach from the water's edge, I looked round and was
apparently alone. Some few black dots here and there disfiguring the
snowy slopes and glittering ice-covered rocks was all that remained of
them. In the midst of the vivid blue-green of the inlet behind me, a
little wedge of black, lay the steamer, the only reminder that I was
one also of these miserable black dots and in an hour I should be
collected and taken away as one of them. For this hour, however, I was
free and at one with the divine glory about me.

It was just noon. The sky was of a pale and perfect blue, the air
still, of miraculous clearness and radiant with the pure light of the
North, unshaded, unsoftened by the smallest mist or cloud. The silence
was unbroken except for the regular thunder of the falling bergs, that
continued with absolute precision at the five-minute interval, and the
accompanying splash of the water. I walked on up the strand, having
the great glistening wall of the glacier's face somewhat on my left.
It was impossible to approach it on land, as the fervid green water
lay deep all about its base. It was only at the side of the inlet that
little beaches had been formed, and on one of these I stood. The
steamer could not get nearer the glacier for fear of the floating
bergs, and a small boat could only approach with deadliest peril at
the risk of being crushed beneath the falling ice or swamped by the
wild division and upheaval of the water that it caused.