Five Nights | Page 2

venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the transparent light illumined it, the lance-like mountains looked down upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to crush it, as if disdaining to harm so fragile a thing.
Very slowly we pushed up the inlet, approaching the shimmering blue-green wall of ice that barred the upper end; seven hundred feet down below the clear surface of the water descends this wall, while three hundred feet of it rise above, forming a glorious shining palisade across the entire width of the inlet. As the sun played on the glittering fa?ade, rays struck out from it as from a reflector, of every shade of green and blue, the deepest hue of emerald mingling with the lightest sapphire, iridescent, sparkling, wonderful. As we crept still nearer, over the living blue of the water, the continual fall of the icebergs from the front wall of the glacier became apparent. At intervals of about five minutes, with a terrific crash like thunder a great wedge of the glittering wall would fall forward into the blue-green depths, and a cloud of snowy spray rise up hundreds of feet into the air. The berg, thus detached, after a few minutes would rise to the surface, glistening, dazzling, and begin its joyous, buoyant voyage downwards to the sea. In all this brilliant setting, with this glory of light around and the triumphal crash of sound like the salute of cannon, amid this joyous movement and in this blaze of colour, amid all that seemed to personify life, we were watching the death of the glacier.
The colossal Muir Glacier, the remains of a world the history of which is lost in the dim twilight none can now penetrate, is dying slowly through a million years. From the mountains, eternally snow-covered, where its huge body, three hundred and fifty miles in extent, has rested through the centuries, it creeps forward slowly towards the sea to meet its doom. Formerly its lip touched the open ocean where now the Taku inlet commences to run inland. But the icy waters, that yet are so much warmer than itself, caressed it with eroding caresses and melted it, and broke bergs from it and rushed inwards, following it till they formed the Taku Inlet, and now the process still goes on, the gigantic body moves forward inch by inch and the green waves break the bergs from its face as the sun invades its structure; and so it lies there, dying slowly through the countless years, glorious, miraculous.
The Captain had promised to approach the face of the glacier as near as was reasonably safe and lie there at anchor for an hour, that the passengers might land at the side of the inlet and those who wished could explore the glacier.
An hour! What was an hour? Those sixty golden minutes would be gone in a flash. Yet it would be an hour of life, of deep emotion, face to face with this monster, strange relic of a forgotten world, stretched on its glorious death-bed.
I was alone still. Not another passenger had yet come up, and I could lean there undisturbed, trying to open my eyes still wider, to expand my heart, to stretch my brain, that I might drink in more of the inimitable grandeur and beauty round me.
The nearer we drew to the glacier the closer packed became the water with the floating bergs; they threatened the ship now on every side, and so slowly did we move we hardly seemed advancing. The bergs flashed and shone as they passed us, rayed through with jewel-like colours, and on one gliding by far from the ship's side I saw two seals at play. For many hundred miles past these seals were the only living things I had seen. The forests on the shore, so thick in the first part of the journey by the Alaskan coast, had long since given way to barren rocks, snow-capped peaks, and ice-filled clefts. No life seemed possible there, the wide distant blue above had shown no bird nor shadow of bird passing. There was no voice of insect nor the least of Nature's children here. Between the thunderous crash of the ice-falls that seemed to shiver the golden air there was intense and solemn stillness.
But the seals played merrily on their floating berg as they passed me, and I watched them long through field-glasses as the joyous, turbulent blue waves carried them far out of my sight towards the open sea.
The clanging of the breakfast bell made me leave my place and