The Glacier Gate: An Adventure Story

by Frank Lillie Pollock

Complete darkness was all around him, except that, a dozen feet above his head, he saw the faintly dim outline of the opening that had let him through. He felt around him. His feet were wedged in a sharp angle. The walls appeared to diverge as they arose. Then for the first time he remembered the candles and matches he carried.

With trembling fingers he felt for them. Three only of the candles were left; the others had fallen from his pocket. After losing three precious matches, he got one of the lights ablaze.

The illumination was wonderfully comforting. The homely light quieted his terror. Almost calmly he surveyed the place where he had trapped himself.

At the first glance he saw that it would be impossible to climb without assistance back to that opening above, which was like a trapdoor in the ceiling of a room. He was in an enormous V-shaped ice crack, narrow at the bottom, widening to the top. Behind him the fissure narrowed abruptly to a mere crevice. In the other direction it seemed to extend some way into the darkness, growing smaller.

Lang quailed with a horrible sense of helplessness, of impending doom. He cursed his own panic, that had led him into this trap. With a little caution he might have got himself free up there, made his way back to his original entrance, and climbed out. Useless now to think of it! The only possible escape now seemed to be to cut and heap up quantities of ice in a pile so high that he could reach the roof of his cavern, and he began to hew into the wall almost hysterically.

He scraped the flakes and chips of ice back under the hole in the top. Working violently, he made a huge cavity in the wall, a huge pile on the triangular bottom. His hatchet went through into another opening. He was amazed, in a dim way, at the number of fissures that seemed to honeycomb what he had supposed a solid block of ice. They must be the result of centuries of warming and cooling, winter and summer, as the glacier flowed slowly down the mountain.

He did not look through into the new fissure he disclosed. He continued to cut, piling the ice chips, till he stopped, discouraged all at once, realizing the futility of this. The loose ice flakes gave no foothold; they slid and sank under him. Without completely filling the chamber he could never get himself to the ceiling.

In a nervous panic he seized the candle and made for the other end of the cavern, where there might be an outlet. It grew lower; he stooped, crawled on his knees; and then it ended suddenly with a black hole in the floor that struck him with terror. It seemed to go down to unutterable abysses.

He scrambled back again, and looked into the crevice he had cut into. There was a tall, narrow fissure there, just big enough to allow his body to pass sidewise. He enlarged the opening, squeezed through, and began to edge along the passage.

It really seemed to lead upward. He had a gleam of hope again. The walls were full of streaks and beds of frozen gravel, and he had enough revival of life to glance curiously into them; but they held no sign of emerald crystals. The passage grew wider, then narrower, and then began to descend. He was mortally afraid of the slope. The candle would not show what was at the bottom. He halted for long minutes, wondering, dreading. But there was no use in going back.