"
Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.
But the People of the Elder
Ice, beyond the white man's ken-- Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the Men!
Thus, guided by this clever hand, the Nautilus passed through all the
ice with a precision which quite charmed Conseil; icebergs or mountains, ice-fields or smooth plains, seeming to have no limits, drift-ice or floating ice-packs, plains broken up, called palchs when they are circular, and streams when they are made up of long strips.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- The
ice was all between.
It is a huge, white-furred creature with six limbs, four of which, short and heavy, carry it swiftly over the snow and
ice; while the other two, growing forward from its shoulders on either side of its long, powerful neck, terminate in white, hairless hands, with which it seizes and holds its prey.
I amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the
ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a book at the end, dragged them across.
About two o'clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of
ice, which seemed to have no end.
"I will just give them a coating of white, for that is as it ought to be; besides, it is good for the oranges and the grapes." And then away she flew, and Kay sat quite alone in the empty halls of
ice that were miles long, and looked at the blocks of
ice, and thought and thought till his skull was almost cracked.
At half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld the glorious spectacle of the Matterhorn, just touched by the rosy-fingered morning, and looking like a huge pyramid of fire rising out of the barren ocean of
ice and rock around it." Then the Breithorn and the Dent Blanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening mass of Monte Rosa made it necessary for us to climb many long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself, yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid birth of the day."
The river was sheeted with
ice, broken into hills at long intervals.
"There is much meat on the
ice - a she-bear and two half-grown cubs."
Three mornings they put out and fought it and the cresting seas it drove that turned to
ice as they fell in- board.