“In the midst of this accumulation of ice and snow we had little difficulty in making, partly by excavating and partly by building up, a sort of cave, large enough to hold twice as much blubber as we had to put into it. Here we deposited our treasure, which was our only reliance for light in case we invented a lamp, and our chief reliance for fire if the winter should come and find us still upon the island.
“After we had thus secured, in this snow-and-ice cave, our stock of blubber, we constructed another much like it near by for our food, and into this we had soon gathered a pretty large stock of ducks and eggs.
John Hardy and the Dean provide for the Future.
“When we contemplated all that we had done in this particular, you may be sure our spirits rose very much.”
“Odd, wasn’t it?” said Fred, “having a storehouse made of ice and snow. But, Captain Hardy, if you’ll excuse me for interrupting you, what did this glacier that you spoke about look like? and what was it anyway?”
“A glacier is nothing more,” replied the Captain, “than a stream of ice made out of snow partly melted and then frozen again, and which, forming, as I have said before, high up on the tops of the hills, runs down a valley and breaks off at its end and melts away. Sometimes it is very large,—miles across,—and goes all the way down to the sea; and the pieces that break off from it are of immense size, and are called icebergs. Sometimes the glaciers are very small, especially on small islands such as ours was. This little glacier I tell you of lay in a narrow valley, as I said before; and, as the cliffs were very high on either side, it was almost always in shadow, and the air was very cold there; so you see how fortunate it was that we thought of fixing upon that place for our storehouses. Then another great advantage to us was, that it was so near our hut,—being within sight, and only a few steps across some rough rocks; but among these rocks we contrived, in course of time, to make, by filling in with small stones, a pretty smooth walk.
“As we caught and put away the ducks in our storehouse, we began at length to preserve their skins. At first we could see no value in them, and threw them away; but we imagined at length that, in case we could not catch the foxes, they would serve to make us some sort of clothing, while out of the seal-skin which I mentioned before we could make boots, if we only had anything to sew with.
“Thus one difficulty after another continued to beset us; but this last one was soon partly overcome, for the Dean, on the very first day of our landing, discovered that he had in his pocket his palm and needle, carrying it always about him when on shipboard, like any other good sailor; but we lacked thread.”