we saw that the sun had risen higher; and as it rose, the sky cleared, and its beams, falling uninterruptedly, became hotter and hotter. Soon we had no longer any use for furs, or for the electric heat in the car.
At the same time the melting began. It was a new danger for us, yet we watched it joyously, since it offered our only chance of escape.
We were just in the bottom of the valley, near its head. It wound away before us, turning out of sight beyond a vast hill of ice. Streams began to trickle down the heights behind us, and, uniting, they formed a rivulet at our feet, flowing over smooth ice with great velocity.
A Deluge from the Melting Ice
Edmund's plan for saving the natives was now put into operation.
"I'll take Juba into the car," he said. "There's just room for him. For the others, we'll fasten the sleds one on each side of the car, which is buoyant enough to float them, and they'll have to take their chances outside."
We made all these arrangements, while the rivulet gradually swelled into a torrent. Before it had become too broad and deep we managed to place the car, with the sleds like outrider, across the center of its course. Then we took our places and waited.
Higher and higher rose the water, while from the slopes behind and around us avalanches of ice descended, and great cataracts began to leap and pour. It was a mercy that we were so situated that the avalanches did not reach us, although we received some pretty hard knocks from ice floes borne away in the current.
At last the stream became deep enough to float us.
Shall I ever forget that moment?
There came a sudden wave of water, forced on by a great slide of ice; we were lifted upon its crest, and away we went! The car was more buoyant than I had believed possible. The sleds, fastened on each side, served to give it a certain stability, and it did not sink as deep as the bottom of the windows. The latter, though formed of glass of great thickness, might have been broken by the tossing ice if they had not been divided into many small panes, separated by bars of steel, which projected a few inches on the outside.
"I made that arrangement for meteoric fragments," said Edmund, "but I never thought of ice when I did it."
The Dangers Lessen as the Ice Melts
The increasing force of the current soon sent us spinning down the valley. We swept around the nearest ice peak on the left, and as we passed under its projecting buttresses a fearful roar above informed us that an avalanche was let loose.
We could not withdraw our eyes from the window on that side of the car, and presently immense masses of ice came crashing into the water, throwing it over us in floods and half drowning the poor wretches on the sleds. Still, they clung on, fastened together, and we could do nothing to help them.
The uproar continued, and the ice came down faster and faster with a deluge of water. The car pitched and rolled, until we could hardly keep our feet, hanging on to every support within reach.
Poor Juba was a picture of abject terror. He hung, moaning, to a bench, his huge eyes aglow with fright. Suddenly the car seemed to be lifted from the water. Then it fell back again and was submerged, so that we were buried in night. We rose again to the surface, and Edmund, glancing from the window, shouted:
"They're gone! Heaven have pity on them!"
In spite of their fastenings, the water and the ice had swept every living soul from the sled on the left! We rushed to the other window.
It was the same story there—the sled on that side was empty too! I saw a furry body tossed in the torrent along side, and then it disappeared in the raging water. At the same time, Edmund exclaimed:
"Heaven forgive me for bringing these poor creatures here, to lose them!"
CHAPTER VII
The Children of the Sun
But the situation was too exciting to permit us to think long of the poor creatures whose deaths we had undoubtedly caused. There seemed less than an even chance of our getting through ourselves.
As we went tossing and whirling on, the water rose still higher, and the blocks of ice assailed us on all sides. First, the sled on the left was torn loose; then the other disappeared. The car was left to make its own way.
But the loss of the sleds was a good thing, now that their occupants were gone. It eased off the weight and the car rose much higher in the water; and gave room more readily when pressed by ice blocks.
It rolled more than before, to be sure; but still it was well ballasted, and did not turn turtle. It took one fearful plunge, however, over a perpendicular fall of, I should say, twenty or thirty feet in height. But the water was very deep; and we came up again after the plunge like a cork, and whirled off down the rapids.
The Belt of Storms
At last the stream became so broad that the danger from the floating ice was to an extent relieved, and we began to look about us more coolly. As in all cases of long-continued peril, we were becoming hardened by so many escapes and growing more and more confident.
We had got out of the ice mountains by this time, and the elevations about us were of no great height. But we could see the glittering peaks towering far behind, and it was a most appalling sight to watch many of the nearer hills suddenly sink, collapse, and disappear, just as—if you have ever watched the operations of the cook in the kitchen when a boy—you have seen pinnacles of soft sugar melt down in water.
Edmund said that all of the icy hills and mounds through which we were passing, no doubt, owed their existence to pressure from behind, where the
