Leaving The Main Trunk,
It Breaks Into A Magnificent Uproar Of Pinnacles And Spires And
Up-Heaving, Splashing Wave-Shaped Masses, A Crystal Cataract
Incomparably Greater And Wilder Than A Score Of Niagaras.
Tracing its channel three or four miles, I found that it fell into a
lake, which it fills with bergs.
The front of this branch of the
glacier is about three miles wide. I first took the lake to be the
head of an arm of the sea, but, going down to its shore and tasting
it, I found it fresh, and by my aneroid perhaps less than a hundred
feet above sea-level. It is probably separated from the sea only by a
moraine dam. I had not time to go around its shores, as it was now
near five o'clock and I was about fifteen miles from camp, and I had
to make haste to recross the glacier before dark, which would come on
about eight o'clock. I therefore made haste up to the main glacier,
and, shaping my course by compass and the structure lines of the ice,
set off from the land out on to the grand crystal prairie again. All
was so silent and so concentred, owing to the low dragging mist, the
beauty close about me was all the more keenly felt, though tinged
with a dim sense of danger, as if coming events were casting shadows.
I was soon out of sight of land, and the evening dusk that on cloudy
days precedes the real night gloom came stealing on and only ice was
in sight, and the only sounds, save the low rumbling of the mills and
the rattle of falling stones at long intervals, were the low,
terribly earnest moanings of the wind or distant waterfalls coming
through the thickening gloom. After two hours of hard work I came to
a maze of crevasses of appalling depth and width which could not be
passed apparently either up or down. I traced them with firm nerve
developed by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on
dizzy edges after cutting footholds, taking wide crevasses at a grand
leap at once frightful and inspiring. Many a mile was thus traveled,
mostly up and down the glacier, making but little real headway,
running much of the time as the danger of having to pass the night on
the ice became more and more imminent. This I could do, though with
the weather and my rain-soaked condition it would be trying at best.
In treading the mazes of this crevassed section I had frequently to
cross bridges that were only knife-edges for twenty or thirty feet,
cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little
Stickeen could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the
top as I progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a
rail fence. All this time the little dog followed me bravely, never
hesitating on the brink of any crevasse that I had jumped, but now
that it was becoming dark and the crevasses became more troublesome,
he followed close at my heels instead of scampering far and wide,
where the ice was at all smooth, as he had in the forenoon. No land
was now in sight. The mist fell lower and darker and snow began to
fly. I could not see far enough up and down the glacier to judge how
best to work out of the bewildering labyrinth, and how hard I tried
while there was yet hope of reaching camp that night! a hope which
was fast growing dim like the sky. After dark, on such ground, to
keep from freezing, I could only jump up and down until morning on a
piece of flat ice between the crevasses, dance to the boding music
of the winds and waters, and as I was already tired and hungry I
would be in bad condition for such ice work. Many times I was put to
my mettle, but with a firm-braced nerve, all the more unflinching as
the dangers thickened, I worked out of that terrible ice-web, and
with blood fairly up Stickeen and I ran over common danger without
fatigue. Our very hardest trial was in getting across the very last
of the sliver bridges. After examining the first of the two widest
crevasses, I followed its edge half a mile or so up and down and
discovered that its narrowest spot was about eight feet wide, which
was the limit of what I was able to jump. Moreover, the side I was
on - that is, the west side - was about a foot higher than the other,
and I feared that in case I should be stopped by a still wider
impassable crevasse ahead that I would hardly be able to take back
that jump from its lower side. The ice beyond, however, as far as I
could see it, looked temptingly smooth. Therefore, after carefully
making a socket for my foot on the rounded brink, I jumped, but found
that I had nothing to spare and more than ever dreaded having to
retrace my way. Little Stickeen jumped this, however, without
apparently taking a second look at it, and we ran ahead joyfully over
smooth, level ice, hoping we were now leaving all danger behind us.
But hardly had we gone a hundred or two yards when to our dismay we
found ourselves on the very widest of all the longitudinal crevasses
we had yet encountered. It was about forty feet wide. I ran anxiously
up the side of it to northward, eagerly hoping that I could get
around its head, but my worst fears were realized when at a distance
of about a mile or less it ran into the crevasse that I had just
jumped. I then ran down the edge for a mile or more below the point
where I had first met it, and found that its lower end also united
with the crevasse I had jumped, showing dismally that we were on an
island two or three hundred yards wide and about two miles long and
the only way of escape from this island was by turning back and
jumping again that crevasse which I dreaded, or venturing ahead
across the giant crevasse by the very worst of the sliver bridges I
had ever seen.
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