d his
leader merrily. "Go cautiously, my lad; we mustn't spoil our
explorations by getting sprained ankles."

The warning was necessary, for the ice surface was broken up into ruts,
hollows, folds, and crags that required great caution, and proved to be
laborious in the extreme to surmount.

"Is there much more of this rough stuff?" said Saxe, after half an
hour's climbing.

The guide smiled.

"The ice gets bigger and wilder higher up," he replied. "There are
smooth patches, but it is broken up into crags and seracs."

This was another surprise to Saxe, to whom the surface of the glacier,
when seen from above on the bluff, had looked fairly smooth--just, in
fact, one great winding mass of ice flowing down in a curve to the foot.
He was not prepared for the chaos of worn, tumbled and crushed-up
masses, among which the guide led the way. Some parts that were
smoother were worn and channelled by the running water, which rushed in
all directions, mostly off the roughly curved centre to the sides, where
it made its way to the river beneath.

It was quite a wonderland to the boy fresh from town, entering the icy
strongholds of nature; for, after ascending a little farther, their way
was barred by jagged and pinnacled masses heaped together in the wildest
confusion, many of the fragments being thirty, even forty feet high.

"Have we got to climb those?" said Saxe, in dismay.

The guide shook his head.

"No, herr: it would be madness to try. Some of them would give way at
the least touch. Stand back a little, and I'll show you why it is
dangerous to climb among the seracs."

He stepped aside, and, using his axe, deftly chipped off a piece of ice
from a block--a fragment about as large as an ordinary paving-stone.

"Hold my axe, sir," he said; and on Saxe taking it, the man picked up
the block he had chipped off, walked a little way from them, and, after
looking about a little, signed to them to watch, as he hurled the lump
from him, after raising it above his head. As he threw it, he ran back
toward them, and the piece fell with a crash between two spires which
projected from the icy barrier.

There was a crash, and then the effect was startling. Both the spires,
whose bases must have been worn nearly through by the action of sun and
water, came down with a roar, bringing other fragments with them, and
leaving more looking as if they were tottering to their fall.

Then up rose what seemed to be a cloud of