THE A VALANCHE. ^ 293 nothing to do but to wait, they decided to go back to Fort Hope and rest for a few hours. They had gone some hundred paces, and had reached the dried- up bed of Paulina River, when an unexpected noise arrested them. It was a distant rumbling from the northern part of the ice-field, and it became louder and louder until it was almost deafening. Something dreadful was going on in the quarter from which it came, and Hobson fancied he felt the ice beneath his feet trembling, which was certainly far from reassuring. " The noise comes from the ch3,in of icebergs," exclaimed Long, " what can be going on there ? " Hobson did not answer, but feeling dreadfully anxious he rushed towards the fort dragging his companion after him:
- ' To the fort ! to the fort," he cried at last, "the ice may have
opened, we may be able to launch our boat on the sea ! " And the two ran as fast as ever they could towards Fort Hope by the shortest way. A thousand conjectures crowded upon them. From what new phenomenon did the unexpected noise proceed % Did the sleeping inhabitants of the fort know what was going on % They must cer- tainly have heard the noise, for, in vulgar language, it was loud enough to wake the dead. Hobson and Long crossed the two miles between them and Fort Hope in twenty minutes, but before they reached the enceinte they saw the men and women they had left asleep hurrying away in terrified disorder, uttering cries of despair. The carpenter Mac-Nab, seeing the Lieutenant, ran towards him with his little boy in his arms. " Look, sir, look ! " he cried, drawing his master towards a little hill which rose a few yards behind the fort. Hobson obeyed, and saw that part of the ice-wall, which, when he left, was two or three miles off in the offing, had fallen upon the coast of the island. Cape Bathurst no longer existed, the mass of earth and sand of which it was composed had been swept away by the icebergs and scattered over the palisades. The principal house and all the buildings connected with it on the north were buried beneath the avalanche. Masses of ice were crowding upon each other and tumbling over with an awful crash, crushing everything beneath them. It was like an army of icebergs taking possession of the island.
