then the game would be hemmed in by
their approach, and they might have a chance of obtaining a shot.

In order the more surely to accomplish this, they separated, and
deployed themselves into a line which extended completely across the
valley. In this formation they continued to advance upward.

When they first adopted this plan, the ravine was about four hundred
yards in width--so that less than one hundred lay between each two of
them. These equal distances they preserved as well as they could, but
now and then the cracks in the icy mass, and the immense boulders that
lay over its surface, obliged one or other, of them to make considerable
detours. As they advanced, however, the distance between each two grew
less, in consequence of the narrowing of the valley, until at length a
space of only fifty yards separated one from the other. The game could
not now pass them without affording a fine opportunity for all to have a
shot; and with the expectation of soon obtaining one, they kept on in
high spirits.

All at once their hopes appeared to be frustrated. The whole line came
to a halt, and the hunters stood regarding each other with blank looks.
Directly in front of them yawned an immense crevasse in the ice, full
five yards in width at the top, and stretching across the glacier from
cliff to cliff.

A single glance into this great fissure convinced them that it was
impassable. Their hunt was at an end. They could go no farther. Such
was the conviction of all.

The glacier filled the whole ravine from cliff to cliff. There was no
space or path between the ice and the rocky wall. The latter rose
vertically upward for five hundred feet at least, and no doubt extended
downward to as great a depth. Indeed, by looking into the fissure, they
could trace the wall of rock to an immense distance downward, ending in
the green cleft of the ice below. To look down into that terrible abyss
made their heads reel with giddiness; and they could only do so with
safety by crawling up to the edge of the lye, and peeping over.

A glance convinced one and all of them that the crevasse was impassable.

But how had the deer got over it? Surely it had not leaped that fearful
chasm?

But surely it had. Close by the edge its tracks were traced in the
snow, and there, upon the lower side of the cleft, was the spot from
which it had sprung. On the opposite brink the disarrangement of the
snow told where it had alighted, ha