over calmness and consideration returned, and I was able to look about.

All the opposite cliffs, rising sheer from the water, were in light,
their cold blue and white surfaces rising far up into the black starfields
overhead. Looking at them intently from this vantage-point I saw without
at first understanding that along them horizontally, tier above tier,
were rows of objects, like--like--why, good Heavens, they were like men
and women in all sorts of strange postures and positions! Rubbing my
eyes and looking again I perceived with a start and a strange creepy
feeling down my back that they WERE men and women!--hundreds of them,
thousands, all in rows as cormorants stand upon sea-side cliffs, myriads
and myriads now I looked about, in every conceivable pose and attitude
but never a sound, never a movement amongst the vast concourse.

Then I turned back to the cliffs behind me. Yes! they ere there
too, dimmer by reason of the shadows, but there for certain, from the
snowfields far above down, down--good Heavens! to the very level where
I stood. There was one of them not ten yards away half in and half out
of the ice wall, and setting my teeth I walked over and examined him.
And there was another further in behind as I peered into the clear blue
depth, another behind that one, another behind him--just like cherries
in a jelly.

It was startling and almost incredible, yet so many wonderful things had
happened of late that wonders were losing their sharpness, and I was soon
examining the cliff almost as coolly as though it were only some trivial
geological "section," some new kind of petrified sea-urchins which had
caught my attention and not a whole nation in ice, a huge amphitheatre
of fossilised humanity which stared down on me.