g as I had strength left.

To decrease the risk of falling down, I contracted the diameter of my
shaft, and thus got on also faster. At length, as I gave a blow above
my head, what was my satisfaction to feel that my axe had entered a mass
of snow. Ask an engineer if he would rather bore under a river with a
rocky, or a sandy and muddy bed, and he will tell you that the rock he
can manage, but that the sand or mud is very likely to baffle him. So I
found with regard to the snow; I got on rapidly through the ice, but as
I worked up through the snow, I had reason to dread every instant that
the superincumbent mass would fall in and smother me. I found that I
made the most progress by scraping it down and beating it hard under my
feet, forming a rude stair as I went on. I had got up ten feet or so
through it, when either my foot had slipped, or a mass of snow had come
down upon me, I could not then tell; but I know, to my horror, that I
felt myself sent toppling down, heels over head, as I feared, to the
bottom of the shaft. I began to give myself up for lost, and would have
shrieked out; perhaps I did so, in very grief and disappointment more
than through actual fear, when I found that I was brought up by my pike,
which had become fixed across the shaft. I held on for some time till
the snow had ceased sliding down below me, and I looked up, and there to
my delight I saw, far above me, through a narrow aperture, the clear
blue sky. I now could have shouted for joy; but my emancipation was not
yet complete, the smooth side of the funnel was to be scaled.

Having secured my pike, I set about it. I tried to run up and gain the
height by a dash. That would not do, I quickly found, for the snow slid
down with my feet as fast as I could lift them, and that made still more
come sliding towards me. The only way to gain the top was by slow and
patient progress, I discovered, after many experiments. I therefore
carefully made step above step, beating each one down hard as I
progressed, and with infinite satisfaction I found that I was again
making an upward progress. At last my perseverance was rewarded with
success, and I found myself standing on a vast mass of snow, which
blocked up the whole of the valley for a considerable distance on the
eastern side and for some way on the west, so far, indeed, that my first
delight at my own deliverance was very much damped by the fears which
seized me for the safety of my frien