Their
limbs became even more elastic and strong as they proceeded, but they
came to no edge and could not look down. Snowfield succeeded snowfield,
and at the end of each always shone the sky.
They continued nevertheless.
Before they knew it, they were on the glacier again. They did not know
how the ice had got there, but they felt the ground smooth underfoot,
and although there were not such awful boulders as in the moraine where
they had passed the night, yet they were aware of the glacier being
underneath them, they saw the blocks growing ever larger and coming ever
nearer, forcing them to clamber again.
Yet they kept on in the same direction.
Again they were clambering up some boulders; again they stood on the
glacier. Only today, in the bright sunlight, could they see what it was
like. It was enormously large, and beyond it, again, black rocks soared
aloft. Wave heaved behind wave, as it were, the snowy ice was crushed,
raised up, swollen as if it pressed onward and were flowing toward the
children. In the white of it they perceived innumerable advancing wavy
blue lines. Between those regions where the icy masses rose up, as if
shattered against each other, there were lines like paths, and these
were strips of firm ice or places where the blocks of ice had not been
screwed up very much. The children followed these paths as they intended
to cross part of the glacier, at least, in order to get to the edge of
the mountain and at last have a glimpse down.
Pages:
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534