"
"Be careful," cautioned Jimmy.
"Oh, there's no danger," said Bobby, climbing to the iceberg.
Bobby began chopping off as large pieces as he thought he could
conveniently handle. The ice was exceedingly hard and brittle. It had
frozen centuries before, under the extremely low temperatures of the
Arctic regions. It had its beginning, perhaps, in snow deposited in some
far-off Greenland valley. Other snows had come upon it, and still other
snows, until a tremendous weight of snow pressed it, as it froze, into a
glass-like hardness.
And all the while the great mass was moving, inch by inch, and slowly,
down the long valley toward the sea. Perhaps a century passed, perhaps
two or three, or even more, centuries, before this particular portion of
the glacier, as these masses of ice between the hills are called,
reached the sea and was at last thrust out beyond the land.
And then, one day, with a report like the report of a cannon, it
separated from the mother glacier, slid out into the current, and began
its southward voyage. Months had passed since then--perhaps a year, or
even two or three years--and all the time it had been wasting away in
the water until Bobby and Jimmy found it this July day, off Itigailit
Island.
But neither Bobby as he chopped at the ice, nor Jimmy as he sat in the
boat, gave that a thought, if indeed they knew it. They were intent only
upon gathering enough of the aged ice to preserve the meat of a polar
bear.
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