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The ice-floor rose to meet these columns in a graceful swelling curve, perfectly continuous, so that the general effect was that of two columns whose roots expanded and met in the middle of the cave; and, indeed, that may have been really the order of formation.
On the farther side of these columns there were signs of a considerable fall in the ice; and by making use of the roots of small stalagmitic columns of that material, which grew on the slope of ice, I got down into a little wilderness of spires and flutings, and found a small cave penetrating a short way under the solid ice-floor.
The same prismatic structure was universal in the sheet on the wall, and in the blocks which lay here and there on the floor and formed the sole remains of former columns. It was to be observed also in many parts of the ice-floor itself. The base of one large column still remained standing in its original position, and its upper end presented a tolerably accurate horizontal section of the column.
Some distance above the ice-floor on the right was a small fir-tree, which had been fixed in the ground, and had become completely covered so that the tree itself had disappeared, its crystal incrustation showing every elegance of variety in form. From each twig of the different boughs, complicated groups of icicles streamed down. The mass to the left, however, was the grandest and most beautiful.
It has been said that the whole ice-floor sloped slightly towards one side of the cave, the slope becoming rather more steep near the edge. Clearly, ever so slight a slope would be sufficiently embarrassing, when the surface was so perfectly smooth and slippery; and this added much to the difficulty of walking in a bent attitude.
I had placed two thermometers at different points on my first entrance one on a drawing-board on a large stone in the middle of the pond of water which has been mentioned, and the other on a bundle of pencils at the entrance of the end chapel, in a part of the cave where the ice-floor ceased for a while, and left the stones and rock bare.
The central mass was extremely solid, but somewhat unmeaning in shape, being a rough irregular pyramid; its size alone, however, was sufficient to make it very striking, the girth being 66-1/2 feet at some distance from the ice-floor with which it blended.
The flooring of the dome-shaped grotto in which I found myself, was loose rock, at a level about two feet below the surface of the ice-floor on which Christian still stood.
Considering the inclination of the upper ice-floor, and the sharpness of the angle between the wall of ice and the line of our descent to this lowest point, I believe that 50 feet will fairly represent the height of the ice-wall from this point to the foot of the slope from the upper wall; so that 72 feet will be the whole depth of ice, from the top of the third ladder to the point where our further progress downwards was arrested.
His three winks had stretched on into hours, when he was wakened by a sudden jarring that shook the craft from stem to stern. He was on his feet in the passage-way at once. "What happened?" he demanded of a sailor. "Blamed if I know," said the other. He was white as a sheet. One thing Dave made sure of as he hurried toward the wheel-room; they were drifting under the ice-floor of the ocean.
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