or, a thousand flashing
rays as if in defiance of the slow death being dealt out to them, like
one who dies brandishing to the last his sword in the face of his
enemy. I longed to look over, down the glimmering wall, to the
swelling rush of the green waters as they leapt up rejoicing to
receive the colossal diamond-like berg as it crashed down to them, to
see them seethe over it and fling their spray high up in the sunshine
in mocking revelry; but it was impossible. The fissures in the ice
multiplied themselves as one neared the edge and now were spread round
my feet in a perfect network, like the meshes of a snare. It was
impossible to go forward, and I was unwilling to go back. I stood
motionless on a little tongue of polished ice between two blue-green
chasms, so deep that they seemed riven down to the very heart of the
glacier; stood there, drinking in the keen gold air and the beauty of
the blue arch above, of the boundless spaces of glittering white round
me, of the narrow green inlet so far below from which echoed the
reverberating roar of the falling ice.

I was debating with myself, should I stay here alone for a time,
letting the steamer go, after having stored some provisions for me on
the shore, and call again for me a few weeks later, in any case before
the short summer of these northern latitudes was over, and winter
closed the inlet?

To stay here alone, the one single human being, in a thousand miles of
space, and not only the one human being, but the one _life_, with no
companionship of animal, bird, or insect, that would be an experience
of solitude indeed!

The idea attracted me; all day and all night to hear nothing but that
thunderous roar, and see nothing but the shining sea, the gleaming
ice-fields, and the glittering bergs, to be alone with Nature, to see
her, as it were, intimately in her awful beauty, with breast and brow
unveiled--and, perhaps, have death as one's reward!

There was fascination in the thought.

What ideas would come to one as one watched the little steamer, the
only link that held one still bound to the world of men, weigh anchor
and steam slowly down the green inlet, departing and leaving one
behind it, as one watched it growing smaller, dwindling ever, till it
was a mere speck, and then saw it vanish, leaving the green riband of
water unbroken save for the passing bergs? How one would realise
solitude when the boat had absolutely disappeared, and how that
solitude wou