a complete failure for although he threw it up many times and to all points of the compass, there was evidently nothing for it to tangle on and darkness finally made him abandon the effort. Since nothing more could be done until morning, Ted unpacked his blanket, rolled up in it and went to sleep.
The cavern was quite light when he awoke for an oblique sunbeam entered through the skylight and made an irregular pattern on the floor about a hundred feet away. He was cold and hungry, so he postponed any further exploring until he had had a scanty breakfast of pemican with ice for a drink. After this he started down the slight incline towards the lower end of the cavern for he reasoned that would be the most likely place to find an outlet. The shaft of light allowed him to walk with comparative ease for a distance of about two blocks but after that the blackness became almost absolute. He was now compelled to creep cautiously forward and guide himself by the wall and it seemed as though a black velvet curtain was hanging just at the tip of his nose as he felt his way downward for almost an hour. Then he was stopped by a hard smooth slick wall which he found extended across the full width of the cavern. After carefully pawing around he came to the conclusion that he was up against a barrier of ice. Before returning he decided to strike one of the precious matches he carried in a waterproof case. For an instant the sudden flare blinded him and then he saw that the entire end of the cavern was blocked by a single mass of bottle green ice. Then, as his eyes finally became adjusted to the sparkle and glitter, he beheld a most astounding vision: an extremely pretty girl stood a few feet in front of him. A mass of blue black hair hung in profusion around her shoulders and her eyes were closed as though blinded by the unexpected light. A nicely fitting jacket of thick white fur with skirt to match protected her from the cold—then the match went out.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I, er, didn't mean to startle you," said Ted instinctively but the girl did not reply.
Hastily getting another match Ted warned: "Look out now, I'm going to strike another match."
This time the blaze did not dazzle and he immediately noticed that the girl had not moved. She wore high leather boots and seemed to be literally standing in space for she was more than a foot off the ground. Then the fact slowly dawned upon him that this fascinating beauty was part and parcel of that tremendous block of glacial ice in which she was frozen solid.
Match after match was struck and burnt to the end and not until he came to the last one could the entranced young man tear himself away from the lovely image. Even then he could hardly realize that several feet of the clearest bluish green ice, he had ever seen, separated them and that she was a frozen figure instead of a living girl.
How long it took or just how he got back Ted was never able to recollect for he was lost in a bewildering maze of thoughts as to what could have happened to entomb this wonderful girl in the midst of such an inhospitable country.
Finally Ted shook off his day dreams, ate a little more of the pemican and started to explore the opposite end of the cavern, and after half an hour of careful groping up the slope he walked into another blockade. This time he could feel a mass of small stones and silt and also some dead wood sticks and pine cones. This gave him the hope that possibly there were some large branches and heavy limbs somewhere around that he could use to build a scaffold up to the skylight and escape, so he decided to take a chance and use his last match. With this he lit several of the pine cones and by their spluttering flame he was able to collect a large pile of branches. These unfortunately proved to be of no value for building purposes for they were all brittle and snapped at the least strain, but anyway they were useful to keep the fire burning while he searched further. The end of the cavern was entirely choked with light gravel and silt and mixed in among this were the sticks and cones. This all indicated that somewhere in that direction there was an inlet but how far back it was he could not even guess.
After several hours of searching he had to abandon hope of getting any material suitable for scaffolding, so he next thought of trying to signal to the outside world by a column of smoke and although this was a most forlorn hope, for there was probably no human being within twenty miles or more of the place, still any chance was better than no chance at all. He therefore built a series of fires down the cavern to the place under the skylight and carried a large supply of fagots there and soon had a fire burning right under the opening and a column of smoke drifting out.
This exertion had made him ravenously hungry and he ate a large portion of his pemican supply, and by the time the meal was finished the long twilight had faded into a starry night and all hope of rescue for that day had gone. Not feeling sleepy he sat by the fire and tried to solve the mystery of the girl in the glacier. Suddenly he decided to have another look at her and picking up a firebrand and an armful of fagots he hurried down the incline to the glacier.
The girl, he now discovered, was even more attractive than the flickering matches had revealed, and he also saw that she appeared to be simply asleep, so tranquil was her expression. She was in a perfect state of preservation and it seemed as though the clear ice was simply a greenish hued plate glass window which she was vainly trying to push aside in order to step down to the cavern floor.
Suddenly an idea began mulling in his brain. He remembered he had several times seen fishes in shallow water frozen solid for the entire winter and in spring they had thawed out apparently none the worse for their suspended animation. Therefore, Ted wondered, why could it not be possible by a slow and uniform thawing to return the girl to life. Immediately he decided to make the attempt and racing back he obtained enough faggots to provide lighr for several hours and with these together with his camping axe he hurried to the glacier face and commenced the task of removing the girl.
For many hours he carefully chopped and sliced at the ice mass until he had cut a gap completely around the girl leaving her embedded in an ice pedestal. He had purposely left a thick layer of ice along her back and now he carefully split the base from the rock floor and gently laid the figure down on this ice runner. This glossy surface combined with the smooth floor of the cavern enabled him to push the block of ice back to the camp fire where he rested just long enough for a meal of pemican and ice.
