said the Captain, paying no attention to the last remark, "I
see, _and_ believe, that at some time or other the ice here must have
been in a flowin' state. I'm too well aware o' the shape of waves an'
eddies, cross-currents and ripples, to doubt or deny that but any man
with half an eye can see that it's anchored hard and fast _now_. I've
looked at it without flinchin' for good ten minutes, and not the
smallest sign of motion can I detect."

"So might you say of the hour-hand of a watch," observed Lawrence.

"Not at all," retorted the Captain, becoming argumentative. "I look at
the hour-hand of a watch for ten minutes and don't see it move, but I
_do_ see that it has in reality passed over a very small but appreciable
space in that time."

"Just so," said the Professor, "I will ere long show you the same thing
in regard to the ice."

"I'll bet you ten thousand pounds you don't," returned the Captain, with
an assured nod.

"Colours nailed!" said Lewis; "but I say, Captain," he added,
remonstratively, "I thought you were a sworn enemy to gambling. Isn't
betting gambling?"

"It is, young man," answered the Captain, "but I always bet ten thousand
pounds sterling, which I never mean to pay if I lose, nor to accept if I
win--and that is _not_ gambling. Put that in your pipe and smoke it;
and if you'll take my advice, you'll go look after your friend Slingsby,
who is gambolling up yonder in another fashion that will soon bring him
to grief if he's not stopped."

All eyes were turned towards the mad artist, who, finding that his
advances to Mademoiselle Nita were not well received, had for the time
forsaken her, and returned to his first (and professional) love. In
wooing her, he had clambered to an almost inaccessible cliff from which
he hoped to obtain a very sketchable view of the Mer de Glace, and, when
Captain Wopper drew attention to him, was making frantic efforts to
swing himself by the branch of a tree to a projecting rock, which was so
slightly attached to its parent cliff that his weight would in all
probability have hurled it and himself down the precipice.

The remonstrative shouts of his friends, however, induced him to desist,
and he sat down to work in a less perilous position.

Meanwhile the Professor, having completed his preliminary preparations,
ordered his assistants to go and "fix the stakes in the ice."

It had been arranged that while the scientific experiments were in
progress, the yo