Consequently I presently stood up and said--

"Look here, old man, this is fine sport no doubt, but just at present
I have a big job on hand--one which will not wait, and I must be going.
See, luck and young eyes have favoured me; here is twice as much gold and
stones as you have got together--it is all yours without a question if
you will show me the way out of this den and afterwards put me on the
road to your big city, for thither I am bound with an errand to your
king, Ar-hap."

The sight of my gems, backed, perhaps, with the mention of Ar-hap's name,
appealed to the old fellow; and after a grunt or two about "losing a tide"
just when spoil was so abundant, he accepted the bargain, shouldered
his belongings, and led me towards the far corner of the beach.

It looked as if we were walking right against the towering ice wall,
but when we were within a yard or two of it a narrow cleft, only eighteen
inches wide, and wonderfully masked by an ice column, showed to the left,
and into this we squeezed ourselves, the entrance by which we had come
appearing to close up instantly we had gone a pace or two, so perfectly
did the ice walls match each other.

It was the most uncanny thoroughfare conceivable--a sheer, sharp crack
in the blue ice cliffs extending from where the sunlight shone in a
dazzling golden band five hundred feet overhead to where bottom was
touched in blue obscurity of the ice-foot. It was so narrow we had to
travel sideways for the most part, a fact which brought my face close
against the clear blue glass walls, and enabled me from time to time to
see, far back in those translucent depths, more and more and evermore
frozen Martians waiting in stony silence for their release.