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.  The little adventurer was only about two years old, yet nothing seemed novel to him, nothing daunted him.  He showed neither caution nor curiosity, wonder nor fear, but bravely trotted on as if glaciers were playgrounds.  His stout, muffled body seemed all one skipping muscle, and it was truly wonderful to see how swiftly and to all appearance heedlessly he flashed across nerve-trying chasms six or eight feet wide.  His courage was so unwavering that it seemed to be due to dullness of perception, as if he were only blindly bold; and I kept warning him to be careful.  For we had been close companions on so many wilderness trips that I had formed the habit of talking to him as if he were a boy and understood every word.

We gained the west shore in about three hours; the width of the glacier here being about seven miles.  Then I pushed northward in order to see as far back as possible into the fountains of the Fairweather Mountains, in case the clouds should rise.  The walking was easy along the margin of the forest, which, of course, like that on the other side, had been invaded and crushed by the swollen, overflowing glacier.  In an hour or so, after passing a massive headland, we came suddenly on a branch of the glacier, which, in the form of a magnificent ice-cascade two miles wide, was pouring over the rim of the main basin in a westerly direction, its surface broken into wave-shaped blades and shattered blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging motion of a great river cataract.  Tracing it down three or four miles, I found that it discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.

I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day was already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the return trip to get off the ice before dark.  I decided therefore to go no farther, and, after taking a general view of the wonderful region, turned back, hoping to see it again under more favorable auspices.  We made good speed up the cañon of the great ice-torrent, and out on the main glacier until we had left the west shore about two miles behind us.  Here we got into a difficult network of crevasses, the gathering clouds began to drop misty fringes, and soon the dreaded snow came flying thick and fast.  I now began to feel anxious about finding a way in the blurring storm.  Stickeen showed no trace of fear.  He was still the same silent, able little hero.  I noticed, however, that after the storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me.  The snow urged us to make still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way.  I pushed on as best I could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred rods or so of direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down in the turmoil of chasms and dislocated ice-blocks.  After an