The back of the monster was rugged with crevasses.
"You can't cross here," I counselled. "You'd better try farther up, where it's smoother. I'll climb the cliff and take an observation, while you wait here and eat your luncheon. It doesn't do to hurry too much in Greenland."
I was almost an hour making my way up the crags to a point where I could take a bird's-eye view of the mass of ice. It was not a wide glacier—the cliffs opposite were not more than four miles away—but the great number of icebergs it threw off bore witness to the rapidity of its motion.
While he explained the garments.—[Page 292].
Suddenly, almost below me upon the blue-white ice, appeared four or five black figures. They emerged out of a cleft near the edge and marched steadily toward the centre of the glacier. The surface beyond them and upon either hand was criss-crossed with blue crevasses. Glints from the shining icicles hanging down their sides darted up to me as I stood, a mile away. It was very picturesque, but I had no heart for enjoyment.
"The man is crazy!" I burst out and scrambled down the rough stones to overtake him.
In a quarter of an hour I had reached the bottom of the gorge, between the glacier and the mountain. A furious torrent roared along the side of the ice, but a few pinnacles of rock protruding out of the stream gave foothold to cross. Opposite my landing-place a huge blue cleft in the ice, with a gradually rising peak, furnished easy ascent to the surface.
As soon as my head was clear of the cleft, I saw one of the Eskimos running toward me. I hastened to meet him.