Five Nights | Page 5

dots had swarmed up on
to the edge of the glacier and through the thin, glittering air their voices
and laughter at intervals came faintly to me. I sprang over the crevasse
and walked on quickly to a point where the fissures grew thick about
my feet and the green-blue blood of the glacier glowed in them on
every side.

I was looking now down the inlet and was near enough to the face of
the glacier to hear, though dulled by distance, the crash of the falling
bergs into the foaming water beneath. I could not approach nearer for
crevasses hemmed me in; the ice showed itself clear of snow and was
so slippery I could hardly stand. One false step now, one small slip and
I should disappear down one of these green rents, swallowed up in
between those gleaming crystal sides to remain one with the glacier for
all time. My idea had been to approach the face of the glacier from the
top, but I found this to be as impossible, by reason of the crevasses, as
it had been to approach it from the sea on account of the falling bergs.
Sacred, inaccessible, guarded above and below, the great gleaming wall
stood there through the centuries, defying the puny curiosity, the feeble
efforts of man to even gaze upon it and marvel over it, except from a
long distance. I would have given all I had to have been able to advance
to the very edge and, kneeling there, look over it down those majestic
palisades of white flushed through with green, throwing back to the sun,
their destroyer and conqueror, 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 would
thrill through and through one's blood as the long light night rolled by
and dawn and day succeeded with their unvarying march of silent
glittering hours!
And if death came on the wings of a storm such as rises suddenly in
these regions and piled high the snow over the camp, freezing the
inmate, or if it came by slow starvation, the steamer having been lost
on that dangerous rocky coast and none other having come in time,