out with its arms to the right
and the left. It was covered by snow on top, but at its sides there were
gleams of blue and green and drab and black, aye, even of yellow and
red. They could now see to larger distances, as the enormous and
unceasing snowfall had abated somewhat and was only as heavy as on
ordinary snowy days. With the audacity of ignorance they clambered up on
the ice in order to cross the interposing tongue of the glacier and to
descend farther behind it. They thrust their little bodies into every
opening, they put their feet on every projection covered by a white
snow-hood, whether ice or rock, they aided their progress with their
hands, they crept where they could not walk, and with their light bodies
worked themselves up until they had finally gained the top of the wall.

They had intended to climb down its other side.

There was no other side.

As far as the eyes of the children reached there was only ice. Hummocks,
slabs, and spires of ice rose about them, all covered with snow. Instead
of being a wall which one might surmount and which would be followed by
an expanse of snow, as they had thought, new walls of ice lifted up out
of the glacier, shattered and fissured and variegated with innumerable
blue sinuous lines; and behind them were other walls of the same nature,
and behind them others again, until the falling snow veiled the distance
with its gray.

"Sanna, we cannot make our way here," said the boy. "No," answered his
sister.

"Then we will turn back and try to get down somewhere else."

"Yes, Conrad."

The children now tried to climb down from the ice-wall where they had
clambered up, but they did not succeed. There was ice all about them, as
if they had mistaken the direction from which they had come. They turned
hither and thither and were not able to extricate themselves from the
ice. It was as if they were entangled in it. At last, when the boy
followed the direction they had, as he thought, come, they reached more
scattered boulders, but they were also larger and more awe-inspiring, as
is usually the case at the edge of the glacier. Creeping and clambering,
the children managed to issue from the ice. At the rim of the glacier
there were enormous boulders, piled in huge heaps, such as the children
had never yet seen. Many were covered all over with snow, others showed
their slanting under-sides which were very smooth and finely polished as
if they had been shoved along on them,