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The lips are bright yellow, the cavernous mouth pale flesh colour, the throat and under-surface dull white. The body is lumpy, and about the size of a large man's fist. The eyes, placed on the summit of a disproportionately large head, are embedded in horn-like protuberances, capable of being elevated or depressed at pleasure.

Our course, we could see, would take us just along the side of the ridge before mentioned a capital mark for later journeys. The going was excellent; a thin layer of conveniently loose snow was spread over a hard under-surface, and made it very suitable for skiing. The lie of the ground told us at once that we had the right pattern of ski the kind for level ground, long and narrow.

The silver maple gets its name from the whitish under-surface of its leaves, and it is a favorite shade-tree; it has a slender trunk and long, drooping branches. The foliage is light and rather dull-looking, and it is not a very bright tree in autumn.

Such a tent sometimes condenses a little moisture in a cold rain, but it never "sprays" as does a duck shelter; it never leaks simply because you have accidentally touched its under-surface; and, best of all, it weighs no more after a rain than before it. This latter item is perhaps its best recommendation.

It comes from the country cousin, and is generally in these words or thereabouts: "What piece ought we to take tickets for?" which generally has an under-surface suggestion, and might be translated into: "For what theatre are you going to get us seats?"

We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us.

"Yonder is something quite as good, if not better," said Slingsby. He pointed, as he spoke, to a part of the crevasse higher up on the glacier, where a projecting cave of snow overhung the abyss. From the under-surface of this a number of gigantic icicles hung, the lower points of the longer ones almost lost in the blue depths.

It is full seventeen inches long to the tips of the tail-feathers; the bill is coral red, the under-surface pure white, the back and wings deep purple, while the shoulders, head and nape, and some spots on the upper part of the back and wings, are pure azure blue; the tail is white, with the feathers narrowly blue-edged, but the narrow part of the long feathers is rich blue.

All at once I was startled by hearing the loud importunate hunger-call of a young cuckoo quite close to me. Moving softly up to the low hedge and peering over, I saw the bird perched on a long cross-stick, which had been put up in a cottage garden to hang clothes on; he was not more than three to four yards from me, a fine young cuckoo in perfect plumage, his barred under-surface facing me.

Then out of the growing darkness to the westward long gleams of silver light flashed up from the dull grey water and wandered about the under-surface of the gathering clouds, coming nearer and growing brighter every minute, jumping about the firmament as though the men behind the projectors were either mad or drunk; but the signals spelt out to those who understood them the cheering words: "All right.