He walked up to the barrier. The ice wall towered above him, perhaps forty or fifty feet high in some places, indescribably ancient looking, greenish, full of streaks and beds of frozen gravel. It was melting fast. Streams of water ran out everywhere, and down the center splashed a good-sized cascade springing from a sort of cavern that the stream had hollowed from the ice, and tumbling over rocks that might be either drift or the underlying earth itself.
Here it must be that Morrison had found the stones, and here he must have climbed and fallen and broken his ribs. Lang searched through the wet gravel, poking it with a stick, but found nothing that looked even remotely like any sort of crystal. The rocks were wet and icy and slippery, but he was considerably younger and more active than the explorer, and he scrambled up to the source of the stream without great difficulty.
According to Morrison’s theory, the rock or gravel containing the emerald pocket lay somewhere back in the ice, whence a few odd stones had been washed out, probably by this very streamlet. Lang had imagined himself chopping away the ice, following the stream back, till it led him infallibly to the jewels; but he had by no means realized the immense magnitude of the undertaking. It might not be this stream at all; it might be any other of the scores of them; he might have to tunnel back for yards, hundreds of yards. He need hardly have feared being forestalled by any one; for there might be a whole summer’s work in the digging out of the treasure.
Considerably dashed, and scarcely knowing how to begin, he climbed out of the valley, and once more reconnoitered the sea. He returned to camp and got the hatchet. He wished in vain for the lost ax and pick, and made his way back to the little ice cave of the cascade, and began to hew into the glacier.
The ice was rotten and soft. It was not frozen water, of course, but compressed, frozen snow, fallen on the upper heights, and slowly, slowly sliding down toward the sea, a mile, perhaps, in a century. There was plenty of frozen gravel embedded in it, and Lang scrutinized it all closely, but without discovering any green stones. Spattered with water, covered with ice chips, he worked a narrow tunnel back a long way, perhaps for ten feet, breaking through beds of sand and stones of all sizes, several fairly large rocks, some piece of ancient wood; and then the stream he was tracking broke into four or five rivulets, each coming from a different direction.
He had never thought of such a thing. He had no idea from which of these streamlets Morrison’s emeralds might have come. He hewed a little farther mechanically, and then gave up, at a loss.
He crept back to the outer air, much discouraged. The enormity of the task loomed larger than ever. The problem of that half mile of ice staggered him.
He walked along the valley, scrutinizing the glacier end. Twice he hewed tentatively into fissures whence strong, muddy streams were gushing. The sun had clouded over; the clear morning was growing misty, threatening the inevitable rain. It was getting toward noon, he thought and he returned to his camp for refreshment and to think the problem over.
His coal fire was still burning, and after he had eaten he busied himself at making a shelter, a sort of low shed of poles and bark and cedar branches, which would shoot off the worst of the rains. Complete dryness was not to be hoped for, in this climate.
He was suddenly amazed at his own health and hardiness. He had been shipwrecked, had tramped with a heavy load for Heaven knew how many miles, had been wet day and night, had lived on the most undesirable diet, and in spite of it all he felt rough, tough and full of energy, without so much as a cold. His nervous breakdown had vanished; so had all his mental torture at what Boston thought of his collapse; and all his terror of the future. He did not care a continental for Boston, nor for the whole medical profession. He remembered that the Northern physicians had prescribed for him sea air and a moist and depressing climate. They must have been right, and he had assuredly come to the right place for moisture.