upon us. When they were once more safely attached, we entered the car and prepared to ascend.
“You notice,” said Edmund, “that this wind is variable, and there’s our chance.”
We hadn’t noticed it, but he had, and that was sufficient.
“When the blasts weaken,” he continued, “the air springs back from the face of the precipice, and then whirls round to the left. I've no doubt that there’s a passage there, through which the wind finds its way back behind this icy mountain, and if we can get there we shall probably find some sort of shelter.
“Then, I hope, it’ll be comparatively an easy thing to make our way into a calmer region of the atmosphere. I’m going to take advantage of the first lull.”
It worked out just as he had predicted. As the wind surged back, after a particularly vicious rush against the mighty blue cliff, we cut loose and sailed up into it, and away we went. We rushed past the glittering wall so swiftly that it made our heads swim. In two or three minutes we rounded a corner, and then found ourselves in a kind of atmospheric eddy, where the car simply spun round and round, with the two united sleds hanging below it.
“Now for it!” said Edmund, and touched a knob.
One Crisis Is Passed Without Accident
Instantly we rose rapidly. We must have shot up a couple of thousand feet, when the wind caught us again, coming apparently over the top of the icy barrier that we had flanked. It swept us off with terrific speed. Suddenly the air cleared all about.
The spectacle that opened around and below was—well, I wish I could describe it! But a hundred languages rolled into one couldn’t do it.
We were in the midst of the crystal mountains! They towered around us on every side and stretched away in ranges of shining pinnacles. And such shapes! Such colors! Such flashing and blazing of gigantic rainbows and prisms!
There were mountains that looked to my amazed eyesight as lofty and massive as Mont Blanc, composed all of crystalline ice, refracting and reflecting the sunbeams with iridescent splendor! For now we could begin to see the orb of the sun itself, poised on the edge of the jagged, gem-glittering horizon. The jeweled summit split its beams into a million bright halos.
There was one mighty peak, still ahead of us, but toward which we were rushed sidewise with terrific speed, that will haunt my dreams forever. It towered high above our level, and was simply one awful coruscating Alp of light, darting out on every side blinding rays of a thousand splendid hues, as if a whole worldful of emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds had been heaped together in one stupendous pile and set on fire by the sun!
We were speechless, even Edmund. But presently he spoke, very calmly; but what he said instantly changed our amazement to terror.
“Boys,” he said, “there’s something serious the matter with the apparatus I can’t make the car rise higher. I can no longer cause it to react against an obstacle. We are at the mercy of the wind. If it carries us against that glittering devil, no power under heaven can help us!”
If my hair had not whitened before, it certainly would have whitened now.
When we were swept against the first icy precipice, the danger had come upon us suddenly, unexpectedly, out of a concealing cloud. But now we had to bear the fearful strain of expectation, to see ourselves hurried to destruction with our eyes wide open to the terrible truth.
I thought that even Edmund’s iron face paled a little. On we rushed, still borne sidewise, so that the spectacle was straight before us in all its awfulness, as, with fascinated eyes, we stared through the window. We were almost upon the mountain-peak, when Edmund shouted with a glad voice:
“We’re safe! Look!” he continued. “See how those particles of ice, swept from the face by the tempest, leap hitherward, and then whirl round the peak. We may touch it; but the air, having a free vent on each side, will carry us one way or the other before a serious shock occurs.”
Castaways in a Valley of Ice
He had hardly finished speaking when the crisis arrived. We did just touch the front of a cliff; but it was narrow and sloping, and the wind, howling past it, carried us in an instant round the obstruction.
“Scared ourselves for nothing,” said Edmund. “We were really as safe as a boat in a rapid. The velocity of the current sheered us off.”
But there was a worse danger, which he hadn't yet had time to think about. We began to think of it, however, when, after the scintillant peak was left behind, we saw Edmund again working away at his machinery, while at the same time the car commenced to sink.
“What’s the matter now?” I asked. “We seem to be going down.”
“So we are,” Edmund replied, “and I’m afraid we’ll not go up again right away. The power is failing all the while. It will be pretty hard on us to have it stop in this frightful place, but it looks as though that were our fate.”
Lost and helpless in these mountains of ice! The thought was too terrible to be entertained. For the first time since this adventure began, I heard connected words from Henry’s lips. Their emphasis was terrible.
“Edmund Stonewall,” he said hoarsely, “if you are the cause of my death with your infernal invention, may you be condemned to—”
But he never finished the sentence. His face turned as white as a sheet, and he sank upon the floor.
“Poor fellow!” said Edmund. "He’s fainted.”
In a few minutes Jack and I had Henry in his senses again, but as weak as a child, and lying on one of the cushioned benches. In the mean time the car had descended upon the snow in a deep valley, where we were protected from the wind.
In the profound depression where we now found ourselves a kind of twilight prevailed. We got out of the car, unloosed our companions from the sleds, and then began to look around.
