Toward the west side we came to a closely crevassed
section in which we had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings,
tracing the edges of tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses,
many of which were from twenty to thirty feet wide, and perhaps a
thousand feet deep--beautiful and awful. In working a way through them I
was severely cautious, but Stickeen came on as unhesitating as the
flying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could jump he would leap
without so much as halting to take a look at it. The weather was now
making quick changes, scattering bits of dazzling brightness through the
wintry gloom; at rare intervals, when the sun broke forth wholly free,
the glacier was seen from shore to shore with a bright array of
encompassing mountains partly revealed, wearing the clouds as garments,
while the prairie bloomed and sparkled with irised light from myriads of
washed crystals. Then suddenly all the glorious show would be darkened
and blotted out.
Stickeen seemed to care for none of these things, bright or dark, nor
for the crevasses, wells, moulins, or swift flashing streams into which
he might fall.
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