“You are right, boy; that is a better mass. Come, let us go paint it.”
While walking towards it, Gillie asked how such wild masses came to be made.
“I am told by the Professor,” said Slingsby, “that when the ice cracks across, and afterwards lengthwise, the square blocks thus formed get detached as they descend the valley, and assume these fantastic forms.”
“Ah! jis so. They descends the walley, does they?”
“So it is said.”
Gillie made no reply, though he said in his heart, “you won’t git me to swaller that, by no manner of means.” His unbelief was, however, rebuked by the leaning-tower of Pisa giving a terrible rend at that moment, and slowly bending forward. It was an alarming as well as grand sight, for they were pretty near to it. Some smaller blocks of ice that lay below prevented the tower from being broken in its fall. These were crushed to powder by it, and then, as if they formed a convenient carriage for it, the mighty mass slid slowly down the slope for a few feet. It was checked for a moment by another block, which, however, gave way before the great pressure, fell aside and let it pass. The slope was slight at the spot so that the obelisk moved slowly, and once or twice seemed on the point of stopping, but as if it had become endowed with life, it made a sudden thrust, squeezed two or three obstacles flat, turned others aside, and thus wound its way among its fellows with a low groaning sound like some sluggish monster of the antediluvian world. Reaching a steeper part of the glacier, on the ridge of which it hung for a moment, as if unwilling to exert itself, it seemed to awake to the reality of its position. Making a lively rush, that seemed tremendously inconsistent with its weight, it shot over the edge of a yawning crevasse, burst with a thunderclap on the opposite ice-cliff, and went roaring into the dark bowels of the glacier, whence the echoes of its tumbling masses, subdued by distance, came up like the mutterings of evil spirits.
Gillie viewed this wondrous spectacle with an awe-stricken heart, and then vented his feelings in a prolonged yell of ecstasy.
“Ain’t it splendid, sir?” he cried, turning his glowing eyes on Slingsby.
“Majestic!” exclaimed the artist, whose enthusiasm was equal to that of his companion, though not quite so demonstrative.
“Raither spoiled your drawin’, though, ain’t it, sir?”