ld be quite another thing.

So Captain Hubbell's plan was given up, but it was generally agreed that
it would be a very wise thing, before they took any further steps, to
ascend one of the icebergs in front of them and see what was on the
other side.

The mountain-climbing party consisted of Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Marcy, and three
of the most active of the men. Sammy Block wanted to go with them, but
his wife would not allow him to do it.

"You can take possession of poles, Sammy," said she, "for that is the
thing you are good at, but when it comes to slidin' down icebergs on the
small of your back you are out of place; and if I get that house that
Mr. Clewe lives in now, but which he is goin' to give up when he gets
married, I don't want to live there alone. I can't think of nothin'
dolefuler than a widow with a polar rheumatism, and that's what I'm
pretty sure I'm goin' to have."

The ascent of the nearest iceberg was not such a difficult piece of work
as it would have been in the days when Sammy Block and Captain Hubbell
were boys. The climbers wore ice-shoes with leather suckers on the
soles, such as the feet of flies are furnished with, so that it was
almost impossible for them to slip; and when they came to a sloping
surface, where it was too steep for them to climb, they made use of a
motor sledge furnished with a wheel different from the others. Instead
of points, this wheel had on its outer rim a series of suckers, similar
to those upon the soles of the shoes of the party. As the wheel, which
was of extraordinary strength, revolved, it held its rim tightly to
whatever surface it was pressed against, without reference to the angle
of said surface. In 1941, with such a sledge, Martin Gallinet, a Swiss
guide, ascended seventy-five feet of a perpendicular rock face on Monte
Rosa. The sledge, slowly propelled by its wheel, went up the face of the
rock as if it had been a fly climbing up a pane of glass, and Gallinet,
suspended below this sledge by a strap under his arms, was hauled to the
top of the precipice.

It was not necessary to climb any such precipices in ascending an
iceberg, but there were some steep slopes, and up these the party were
safely carried, one by one, by what they called their Fly-foot Sledge.

After an hour or two of climbing, our party safely reached the topmost
point of the iceberg, and began to gaze about them. They soon found that
beyond them there were other peaks and pinnacles, and that it