Each moment brought them closer to the frowning wall.

A last, close-up survey told the boy that there was no path, no
slanting incline, no rugged steps to the shelf above. But from the
shelf upward there appeared to be a possible ascent.

At that moment he saw something that made him catch his breath hard. A
gigantic ice-pan, measuring hundreds of feet from side to side, had
begun to glide upward over a mass of broken fragments toward that cliff.

"It will go as high as the shelf if it hasn't too many seams," he said
aloud. "It may go up. And it may crash. But it's our only chance."

He looked at the dog. That the old fellow could make this perilous
trip, could mount himself on the very edge of a giant, tilting cake of
ice and ride up--up--up, inch by inch and foot by foot, to pause there
a breathless distance in mid-air and then at the one critical second,
leap to safety on the rocky shelf, the boy did not dream for a moment.
Yet he had no thought of leaving Rover behind.

"Come on," he said quietly, "we'll make it somehow, or we'll go down
together."

Mounting the tilting monster, they stationed themselves at its very
edge and stood there motionless, a boy and a dog in the very midst of
one of nature's most stupendous demonstrations of power.

A long minute passed--two--three. They were now ten feet in air; the
shelf, a yawning distance still before them, appeared to frown down
upon them. To the right of them an ice-pan half the size of the one on
which they rode, having come within some ten feet of the wall, broke
and crumpled down with a crash.

Still their cake glided on. Now they were fifteen feet from the shelf,
now ten. A running jump for the boy would land him safely on the
ledge. But there was the dog. There came a creaking grind, a
snapping, crashing sound, then silence. The pan had broken in two.
Half of it had broken off under the strain. The part on which they
rode still stood firm. They were now twenty feet in air. A dark pool
of water lay beneath them. The boy gave one glance at the blue heavens
and the blinking stars; then, stooping, he picked up the dog and held
him in his arms. He stood there like a statue, a magnificent symbol of
calm in the midst of all this confusion.

With the ice still gliding upward, holding his breath, as if in fear
that the very force of it might send the hundreds of tons crashing to
the abyss below. Phi waited the closing of the gap.

Eight fee