ge like a mountain goat, working to
get around the vertical cliff above us to find an ascent on the other
side. He was soon out of sight, although I followed as fast as I could.
I heard him shout something, but could not make out his words. I know
now he was warning me of a dangerous place. Then I came to a sharp-cut
fissure which lay across my path--a gash in the rock, as if one of the
Cyclops had struck it with his axe. It sloped very steeply for some
twelve feet below, opening on the face of the precipice above the
glacier, and was filled to within about four feet of the surface with
flat, slaty gravel. It was only four or five feet across, and I could
easily have leaped it had I not been so tired. But a rock the size of my
head projected from the slippery stream of gravel. In my haste to
overtake Muir I did not stop to make sure this stone was part of the
cliff, but stepped with springing force upon it to cross the fissure.
Instantly the stone melted away beneath my feet, and I shot with it down
towards the precipice. With my peril sharp upon me I cried out as I
whirled on my face, and struck out both hands to grasp the rock on
either side.

Falling forward hard, my hands struck the walls of the chasm, my arms
were twisted behind me, and instantly both shoulders were dislocated.
With my paralyzed arms flopping helplessly above my head, I slid swiftly
down the narrow chasm. Instinctively I flattened down on the sliding
gravel, digging my chin and toes into it to check my descent; but not
until my feet hung out over the edge of the cliff did I feel that I had
stopped. Even then I dared not breathe or stir, so precarious was my
hold on that treacherous shale. Every moment I seemed to be slipping
inch by inch to the point when all would give way and I would go
whirling down to the glacier.

After the first wild moment of panic when I felt myself falling, I do
not remember any sense of fear. But I know what it is to have a thousand
thoughts flash through the brain in a single instant--an anguished
thought of my young wife at Wrangell, with her immanent motherhood; an
indignant thought of the insurance companies that refused me policies on
my life; a thought of wonder as to what would become of my poor flocks
of Indians among the islands; recollections of events far and near in
time, important and trivial; but each thought printed upon my memory by
the instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape
a