he said, 'we have come into a land of the dead.' . . .
"Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled . . . the
silver-swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly
black--and the earth seemed removed from under him . . ._"
Leaving the low-lying shore, Ootah's path led up through a narrow gorge
between two great cliffs. Since he had returned from the mountains the
path had been covered by many successive falls of snow. At places the
path sloped abruptly downward at a terrible angle, and the ice cracked
and slid beneath the hardy hunters' feet. With the agility of cats,
the dogs fastened their claws into the ice and climbed upward.
Constantly the two men had to hold to the jagged rocks to their right,
otherwise, time after time, they would have slipped into the perilous
abyss below. Through the chasm the moon poured its liquid rays. At
certain points towering crags shut off the light--then Ootah and his
companion had to feel their way slowly upward in the dark. Finally
Ootah's dogs, with a loud chorus of barking, leaped ahead. Seizing an
overhanging ledge of rock Ootah lifted himself to the top of the
precipice. Koolotah's team followed.
For interminable miles a vast icy plateau stretched before them--a
plain glistening with snow and reflecting like a burnished mirror the
misty silveriness of the moon. Over the glacial expanse an eerily
greenish phosphorescence, which palpitated and shifted at times with
vivid splashes of opal and deeper tones of burning blue, hung low.
The upland was split with thousands of canyons that writhed over the
white expanse like snakes in tortuous convulsions. From these
bottomless abysses arose a luminous amethystine vapor. In the depths
jutting icicles took fire and glowed through the lustrous mists like
burning eyes. Where the chasms joined with others or widened, ominous
shapes, swathed in wind-blown blackish-purple robes, with extended
arms, took form. As Ootah and Koolotah dashed forward, great spaces of
clear ice palpitated on all sides of them with interior opaline fires.
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