The silence, indeed, was solemn, awesome; a silence that could be felt; a silence that seemed to creep round the heart and senses, and which no one cared to break. Not even the light breeze made murmur, or even whisper, as it swept over the plateau on which they now sat.
But from their elevated situation the scene spread out before them was wondrous in the extreme. To the north they could gaze away and away over the far-off blue ocean, and to the east all was ice.
It was towards the south, however, that Talbot's telescope was turned, with so many longing, lingering looks, before he resumed the upward journey.
The Norsemen have a legend that around the North Polar regions-at the Pole itself, indeed--there is a great open sea; that green luxuriant islands dot its blue surface, and that thereon dwell a people who have never committed sin, but are still in a pristine state of innocence, just as God made them--"but a little lower than the angels".
Was Talbot expecting to gaze upon just such another open sea as this, I wonder? If so, he was disappointed. So he shut up the great telescope with a sigh. Higher up he would see further, however.
So the march was resumed.
And now for many miles, although the hill-gradient was not so steep, walking was infinitely more arduous, and every here and there they came upon a crevasse in the ice, which had to be bridged over at its very narrowest part by the plank. This was fearsome and truly dangerous work, for that plank was but narrow, and, moreover, it was impossible to keep it from being slippery here and there.
Talbot was ever the first to walk across that terrible bridge; but he was secured to those on the other side by the long rope; and so handy did this bridge turn out that they gained an elevation that day of six thousand feet above the level of the sea.
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At this point they reached a perpendicular ice-cliff that rose sheer up from a narrow plateau to a height of probably five hundred feet.