th would
allow me to move. I shouted and shouted, but there was no answer. I
began truly to despair. "Poor fellows, they must be gone," I thought.
"It will be a sad report I must take to Laban."

I began to ascend to get under the hole again. I found that I could
easily crawl up the incline on hands and knees. I turned to rest for an
instant, and thought that I would give one shout more. There was a
roaring, rumbling noise of the water underneath, which made it necessary
to sing out very sharply to be heard at any distance. I therefore
shrieked out this time at the very top of my voice.

A few instants passed while the echoes died away, and then a faint cry
came up from far, far down the long ice gallery. It was repeated.
There could be no doubt that it was from my friends. I waited to
consider whether I should return and get others to come down with more
ropes, so that should Short and Obed have fallen into an ice-pit, we
might help them out; or whether it was best to wait and see if they were
working their own way up, as I found from experience they might be able
to do. It was while thus waiting for them that I was able to admire the
beauty of the scene. The floor was dark blue, the sides were white, and
the ceiling was of every variety of green and red and yellow, and in
some places so transparent that it seemed surprising that any person,
much less a horse or sleigh, could have passed over it without breaking
through; then there were in the distance arches and columns, and whole
buildings and statues, of every grotesque form imaginable, at least so
my imagination carved out the excrescences and masses of ice I saw piled
up in a long vista before me. I did not stay long without shouting
again, and once more the voices of my friends assured me that they were
drawing near. My heart was now much lighter, and at length I caught
sight of their heads as they crawled up like two four-footed creatures
in the distance. I was truly glad when they got up to me; they had
been, they owned, not slightly alarmed, and were, they showed, very
tired and out of breath.

On breaking through the ice, the impetus they got sent them sliding down
the sloping floor at so great a rate that they could not stop
themselves. On, on they went, not knowing when their journey would end;
but dreading that it might be into some deep hole, or perhaps the
torrent itself. They were well pleased, therefore, when they were
brought up sud