or it, the mighty mass slid slowly down the slope for a few
feet. It was checked for a moment by another block, which, however,
gave way before the great pressure, fell aside and let it pass. The
slope was slight at the spot so that the obelisk moved slowly, and once
or twice seemed on the point of stopping, but as if it had become
endowed with life, it made a sudden thrust, squeezed two or three
obstacles flat, turned others aside, and thus wound its way among its
fellows with a low groaning sound like some sluggish monster of the
antediluvian world. Reaching a steeper part of the glacier, on the
ridge of which it hung for a moment, as if unwilling to exert itself, it
seemed to awake to the reality of its position. Making a lively rush,
that seemed tremendously inconsistent with its weight, it shot over the
edge of a yawning crevasse, burst with a thunderclap on the opposite
ice-cliff, and went roaring into the dark bowels of the glacier, whence
the echoes of its tumbling masses, subdued by distance, came up like the
mutterings of evil spirits.

Gillie viewed this wondrous spectacle with an awe-stricken heart, and
then vented his feelings in a prolonged yell of ecstasy.

"Ain't it splendid, sir?" he cried, turning his glowing eyes on
Slingsby.

"Majestic!" exclaimed the artist, whose enthusiasm was equal to that of
his companion, though not quite so demonstrative.

"Raither spoiled your drawin', though, ain't it, sir?"

"Yonder is something quite as good, if not better," said Slingsby.

He pointed, as he spoke, to a part of the crevasse higher up on the
glacier, where a projecting cave of snow overhung the abyss. From the
under-surface of this a number of gigantic icicles hung, the lower
points of the longer ones almost lost in the blue depths. A good
position from which to sketch it, however, was not easily reached, and
it was only by getting close to the edge of the crevasse that the
persevering artist at length attained his object. Here he sat down on
his top-coat, folded several times to guard him from the cold ice,
spread out his colour-box and sketching-block, and otherwise made
himself comfortable, while Gillie sat down beside him on his own cap,
for want of a better protector.

Had these two enthusiasts known the nature of their position, they would
have retired from it precipitately with horror, for, ignorant of almost
everything connected with glaciers, they had walked right off the solid
ice a