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No attempt was made to go over the top as Rolla had done; instead, about two miles below the ridge a crevasse was located in the granite; and by means of some two tons of powder a narrow opening was made through to the other side. Through it the men carried their supplies on their backs, transferring everything to improvised sleds, a hundred pounds to a man.
Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were lost in misty distance.
A little cove lay at the base of this crevasse, and here a bed of whitest sand had sifted in, rimmed by a great heap of well-sanded, bright-blue shells of every size and shape. This was the storehouse from which Day Rackby drew her speaking shells. He looped the painter of his dory under a stone and ascended the rock. His heart was in his throat.
"Well," said the guardian Lucas, "when I let you down, as you are no fatter than a herring bone, you will get shaken about in the crevasse, and will risk breaking your bones, while if you have the 'sabots' on your hands you can protect yourself against the walls by putting out your arms to the right and the left, according as you are shaken up against them.
It is human nature, it is the lesson of history, that real wrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like nature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes a cyclone, a slight break in the levee 'a crevasse with immense destructive power.
Occasionally an ant will slip in crossing a twiggy crevasse, and his leaf become tightly wedged. After sprawling on his back and vainly clawing at the air for a while, he gets up, brushes off his antennæ, and sets to work. For fifteen minutes I have watched an Atta in this predicament, stodgily endeavoring to lift his leaf while standing on it at the same time.
For many days after this, the Hassler pursued her course, past a seemingly endless panorama of mountains and forests rising into the pale regions of snow and ice, where lay glaciers in which every rift and crevasse, as well as the many cascades flowing down to join the waters beneath, could be counted as she steamed by them.
About an hour and a half after starting we came on mistily outlined pressure ridges. We were running by the sledges. Suddenly Wilson shouted 'Hold on to the sledge, and I saw him slip a leg into a crevasse. I jumped to the sledge, but saw nothing. Five minutes after, as the teams were trotting side by side, the middle dogs of our team disappeared.
They are several miles long and half a mile to a mile broad. The surface is very uneven and consists of innumerable knobs and pyramids of clear ice. I made several excursions on the glaciers of Mus-tagh-ata on foot or on yaks. One must be well shod so as not to slip, and one must look out for crevasses. Once we were stopped by a crevasse several yards broad and forty-five feet deep.
"Hast thou a lover?" asked Rudy; all his thoughts were naturally on love just then. "I have none," answered the maiden, with a laugh; it was as if she had not spoken the truth. "Do not let us go such a long way round," said she. "We must keep to the left; it is much shorter." "Ah, yes," he replied; "and fall into some crevasse. Do you pretend to be a guide, and not know the road better than that?"
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