remind them of the vegetable world from
which they had passed as if by magic. As Lewis remarked, they seemed to
have been suddenly transported to within the Arctic circle, and got lost
among the ice-mountains of Spitzbergen or Nova Zembla.

"It is magnificent!" exclaimed Nita Horetzki with enthusiasm, as she
paused on the summit of an ice-ridge, up the slippery sides of which she
had been assisted by Antoine Grennon, who still held her little hand in
his.

Ah, thoughtless man! he little knew what daggers of envy were lacerating
the heart of the mad artist who would have given all that he possessed--
colour-box and camp-stool included--to have been allowed to hold that
little hand even for a few seconds! Indeed he had, in a fit of
desperation, offered to aid her by taking the other hand when half-way
up that very slope, but had slipped at the moment of making the offer
and rolled to the bottom. Lewis, seeing the fate of his rival, wisely
refrained from putting himself in a false position by offering any
assistance, excusing his apparent want of gallantry by remarking that if
he were doomed to slip into a crevasse he should prefer not to drag
another along with him. Antoine, therefore, had the little hand all to
himself.

The Professor, being a somewhat experienced ice-man, assisted Emma in
all cases of difficulty. As for the Captain, Gillie, and Lawrence, they
had quite enough to do to look after themselves.

"How different from what I had expected," said Emma, resting a hand on
the shoulder of Nita; "it is a very landscape of ice."

Emma's simile was not far-fetched. They had reached a part of the
glacier where the slope and the configuration of the valley had caused
severe strains on the ice in various directions, so that there were not
only transverse crevasses but longitudinal cracks, which unitedly had
cut up the ice into blocks of all shapes and sizes. These, as their
position shifted, had become isolated, more or less,--and being
partially melted by the sun, had assumed all sorts of fantastic shapes.
There were ice-bridges, ice-caves, and ice obelisks and spires, some of
which latter towered to a height of fifty feet or more; there were also
forms suggestive of cottages and trees, with here and there real
rivulets rippling down their icy beds, or leaping over pale blue ledges,
or gliding into blue-green lakes, or plunging into black-blue chasms.
The sun-light playing among these silvery realms--glinti