pinnacles. Such shapes! Such colors! Such flashing and blazing of
gigantic rainbows and prisms! There were mountains that looked to my
amazed eyes as lofty as Mont Blanc, and as massive, every solid mile of
which was composed of crystalline ice, refracting and reflecting the
sunbeams with iridescent splendor. For now we could begin to see a part
of the orb of the sun itself, prodigious in size, and poised on the edge
of the gem-glittering horizon, where the jeweled summits split its beams
into a thousand haloes.

There was one mighty peak, still ahead of us, but toward which we were
rushed sidewise by the wind, which surpassed all the others in
marvelousness. It towered majestically above our level--a superb,
stupendous, coruscating _Alp of Light_! On every side it darted blinding
rays of a hundred splendid hues, as if a worldful of emeralds, rubies,
sapphires, and diamonds had been heaped together in one gigantic pile and
transfused with a sunburst. Even Edmund was for a moment speechless with
astonishment at this wildly magnificent sight. But presently he spoke,
very calmly, though what he said changed our amazement to terror.

"The trouble with the apparatus is very serious. I am unable to make the
car rise higher. It will no longer react against an obstacle. We are
entirely at the mercy of the wind. If it carries us against that
glittering devil no power under heaven can save us."

If my hair had not whitened before it surely would have whitened now!

[Illustration: "We were in the heart of the _Crystal Mountains_!"]

When we were swept against the first icy precipice the danger had come
unexpectedly, out of a concealing cloud, and anticipation was swallowed