Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...as the best trained horses would have done, and the sled slewed in followmg. They were going at such speed that it would have been impossilbe for the sled to make the turn without slewing more or less, and so smooth was the surface that the sled swung around in a half circle. ' Just too late, Stokes saw that there was an innnense fissure, or crack, in the ice a few feet beyond the bowlder. It was impossible to prevent the sled from going as far as the edge of that fissure, and Stokes made a wild effort to leap. It was too late everi for that. Amorak had conducted his flight with splendid shrewdness. ' I-Ie had led the team of dogs to just that point in the hope of accomplishing this very thing, knowing as he did that the sled would slew and carry his pursuer over the edge of the fissure. It was all over in a second. Stokes, half rising, felt the sled suddenly give way, and down he went, his weight and that of the sled dragging the entire team of dogs after him. ' CHAPTER XVIII. AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GLACIER. As they went, man and dogs making frantic efforts to clutch at the edge of the ice, he had a glimpse of an evil face looking down at him. Amorak had run from the bowlder to the edge of the fissure, and was completing the catastrophe by pushing over the two dogs that led the team, and who would have been dragged over in any case. Usually, to fall into the fissure of a glacier means certain death, for these cracks are exceedingly deep, and the chances are that he who falls in will be ground to pulp by the movement of the vast river of ice upon the stony bed below. It was Amorak himself who saved Stokes' life. By pushing the leading dogs over the edge he sent them down faster than the others in the team, so that they landed on...