United States or Zimbabwe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At other times the thin sheets of overflow ice would sway and bend as the sled passed quickly over them in a way that gives to ice in such condition its Alaskan name of "rubber-ice," while for the fifteen or twenty miles of McManus Creek, the headwaters of the Chatanika, we had continuous stretches of fine glare ice with enough frost crystals upon it from condensing moisture to give a "tooth" to the dogs' feet, just as varnish on a photographic negative gives tooth to the retouching pencil.
The landing-wheels were shooting along over the snow with Barney's keen eyes strained ahead that he might avoid possible rough spots, when there came a cry of dismay from Bruce. With one startled glance about, Barney saw all. To the right and left of them the ice seemed to rise like the walls of an inverted tent. "Rubber-ice," his mind told him like a flash.
They had attempted to land where the water had but recently frozen over, and was covered with a deceptive coating of snow. Only one hope remained: to rise again. Once the weak rubber-ice thin, elastic salt-water ice gave way, nothing could save them. Tilting the planes and tail to their utmost capacity, Barney set first one engine in motion and then the other.
But I stopped Peter. I had no wish to slide on rubber-ice just for the sake of seeing it bend. "Can you imagine anything lovelier," I remarked as a derailer, "than the prairie at this time of the year, and this time of day?" Peter followed my eye out over the undulating and uncounted acres of sage-green grain with an eternity of opal light behind them.
Word Of The Day