The Glacier Gate: An Adventure Story

by Frank Lillie Pollock

He crawled entirely out of the snow, immensely relieved to find himself unbroken, and got his breath back. He was at the bottom of a crevice, or crevasse, fifteen or twenty feet deep, and three or four feet wide, that extended into darkness both ways. The problem of getting out was before him. He would have to cut steps in the perpendicular ice walls. It did not look at all impossible, nor even very difficult, for he could make his footholds in both walls, straddling the big fissure as he ascended.

His hatchet had fallen from his belt, but he found it by groping in the snow. He cut a couple of steps, and raised himself into them. It was going to be more difficult than he had thought. The crevice was too wide to keep a foot on each side with any ease. He came down, and looked toward the dim farther end of the fissure. He had wanted to see the interior of the glacier, and it would be a pity to climb out without utilizing this opportunity.

He made his way along the bottom of the crack, which came to a sharp edge under his feet. It was not quite dark; a queer, pale twilight seemed to filter in from everywhere. Water was dripping from the top, trickling down the walls and along the bottom; and all at once his feet went from under him and he glissaded down a wet, slippery incline, unable to check himself. He brought up against something solid at last, on his back in pitch darkness; and somehow, he hardly knew how, he scrambled back up that slope almost as fast as he had slid down it. At the top he lay flat, out of breath, horror stricken at the thought of what he might have escaped.

He made his way back to the heap of snow where he had fallen in. In the other direction the crevice appeared to slope upward. It promised an easier way to the top than scaling the sheer wall, and he ventured along it, feeling very cautiously ahead at every step.

It did rise, wet and slippery and almost as steep as a stair, where lumps of stone in the ice afforded him all his foothold. He was hopeful of getting close enough to the top to hack a way through when the crevice ended against a hard, impenetrable slab of frozen gravel.

Impossible to go any farther this way, but, as he groped about in the dimness, he saw daylight through a small crack at his right hand. It was only a few inches wide, but he heard the dripping of water, and knew that it must be in connection with the upper air.

He widened it a little with the hatchet. There was certainly greater space beyond. In high hope, he hewed the ice out of an opening wide enough for his head to pass, and afterward for his body.

He saw a six-foot space, dimly lighted from above, narrowing away in both directions. The bottom, apparently of fresh snow and ice, was shortly below him. He crept through his orifice without any doubt, hung by his hands, and let go.

His feet crashed through the apparent flooring that collapsed all around him. He slid and slithered helplessly in a slush of wet snow that slid with him, down, it seemed, out of the light, till he found himself wedged fast. His legs and half his body were down in or through a tight opening, from which he could not extricate himself. He was too scared to think. Madly he hacked at the ice with the hatchet to which he had still clung. And almost at the first blow a large flake of the squeezing ice fell off, dropped, and he dropped with it.

He went down so unexpectedly that he did not even clutch at anything, and landed on his feet with a hard jar, slipped, fell and scrambled to his knees.