Again and again the ice came tumbling down. Sometimes immense pieces which had broken off from the bottom of the glacier, seven hundred feet below the surface, rose slowly and unexpectedly from the depths, throwing the water high in air. These bottom fragments were not white, but as blue as indigo. From their gleaming sides the water poured in roaring cataracts.
“What are those sailors up to?” sung out Randolph suddenly, pointing to a boat’s crew that was leaving the side of the ship.
“Going to fill the refrigerator, sir,” replied a steward, who caught the question as he passed.
Randolph thought he was joking; but sure enough, the men in the boat grappled a huge floating cake of ice, towed it to the gangway, and made it fast to a tackle and fall, which picked it up and swayed it over on the deck—a fine young berg of beautiful clear ice weighing something over two tons. Quickly it was stowed below, and other pieces followed. Although it was floating in salt water, the ice coming from the glacier was perfectly fresh. In this way about forty tons were taken on board and stored.
After breakfast all who wished to do so went ashore in the steamer’s boats, landing on a gravelly beach about a mile from the foot of the glacier. Bessie was obliged to remain on board with her mother, the rest joining the shore-going party.
Leaving the beach they walked up over slippery rocks, gravel and protruding bits of black ice, until, before they knew it, they were on the glacier itself. Its surface was roughened and stained, and every now and then they came to a wide crack or “crevasse” in the ice, with sloping, treacherous sides, its shadowy depths reaching no one knew how far below. To fall into one would have been almost certain death.
“I wonder how thick this glacier is?” asked some one, peering down into one of these terrible crevasses.
“About a thousand feet,” was the answer. “The front of the glacier is over three hundred feet high, above the sea; that gives about seven hundred beneath the surface.”
“Do you know how long it is, from the source to the front?”
“Upwards of forty miles, I believe. And a mile wide at the mouth.”