In five minutes we were all up, standing, clinging, and balancing on the glassy edges of ice, and hopping and leaping from cake to cake.

Cracks, crevices, and jagged holes opened ten, fifteen, and twenty feet sheer down all about us.

A single misstep would send us head-foremost into them.
"I say," exclaimed Capt.

Mazard, barely saving himself from a tumble, "this is a devil of a funny place for a bear-hunt! No chance for rapid retreats! It will be fight bear, or die!" The place where the bears had stood when old Trull had fired was back fifteen or twenty rods to the right.

We worked off in that direction, getting occasional glimpses of the water down in the deep holes, and stopping once to pull Corliss out of a wedge-shaped crevice into which he had slipped.