ever contemplated.

For once experience and imagination failed him. He was entering a land
of wonder in the belief that he was prepared for everything monstrous in
Nature. He believed that with the stupendous vision of Unaga he had
witnessed Nature's most sublime effort. So, out of his confidence he was
trapped as easily as a man of no experience at all.

At his bidding dogs and men moved to the assault of the glacial barrier.
The thing that they contemplated was by no means new. A hundred times
had the broken surface of glacier formed some part of their long winter
trail. It was never without danger, but it was never a sufficient
barrier to give them pause.

The surface of the glacier appeared to be that which they all knew. The
only feature for disquiet were the thunderous detonations, the deep
rumbling groans that rose up out of its far-off heart, and found a
hundred echoes amongst the surrounding hills. For the rest, it was a
broken surface, bearing every feature of a summer thaw frozen down again
by the icy breath of winter, and adorned with a patchwork of drift
snow.

Half a mile from the grey headland which was their starting point,
confidence received its first check. It was Oolak who made discovery.
The watchful, silent creature was unerring in his instincts, unerring in
his scent of a treachery he always anticipated. He had halted his dogs,
and stood in the half light, peering out this way and that at the
legions of ice spectres surrounding them. Then, quite suddenly, he
hailed the white man to his side, and indicated the ice on which they
were standing.

"It all him move," he said, with his peculiarly significant brevity.

Steve stood for a moment without reply. He was less sensitive to
indications than the Indian. In fact he failed to realize the thing the
other had discovered. He shook his head.

"Guess you're----"

But his denial remained uncompleted. It was interrupted by a sharp cry
from Julyman some distance away with the rear sled. The two men turned
in his direction. They beheld his lean figure busy amongst his dogs,
plying his club impartially, as though in an effort to quell some canine
dispute.

But that was not all. As they gazed they saw the iron-shod tail of the
sled rise up. It seemed to be flung up with great force. For a moment it
remained poised. Then it crashed over on its side to the accompaniment
of a cracking, splitting roar, like the bombardment of massed artillery.

Steve