Although their attempt to reach the surface had been foiled, here was a way which the sun, melting the ice and causing a great avalanche, had made for them. It was plain that all could easily mount to the top by this sloping gulch. Jack dashed back to announce the discovery and Wash came after him, intent upon seeing that Buttsy was carried, in his well wrapped-up coop, out of the crevasse. The youth awoke his friends instantly and in ten minutes all had taken a look at the way of escape and preparations were at once made for departure from the flying machine. Everybody save the professor was laden with stores or instruments, or extra clothing and blankets, as they filed away from the crippled _Snowbird_. The two youthful inventors and builders of the flying machine bade good-bye to her with full hearts. It was not a certainty that they could recover the flying machine, and Jack and Mark felt pretty bad about it. The first thought of all, however, was centered in standing once more upon the surface of the glacier. The fact that the upper part of the ice field might move at any time, and the crevasse be closed while they were held in it, had troubled them all. In half an hour, however, all that danger was past. Other perils might immediately face them; but the chance of being snapped between the jaws of ice was no more to be feared. The golden ball of the earth, around which the island in the air was following its orbit, gave them plenty of light as yet, for the sun was still in such a position that its light was reflected from the earth upon the fast-traveling island in the sky. The party, shaking with cold now, for the night was really arctic in temperature, made for the nearest morainial deposit where trees grew, under the shelter of the cliff which rose so high above the face of the glacier. As the river of ice had pushed its way downward during the past ages, it had scraped earth and stones from the walls of its bed, and this deposit, falling on the ice, had given root to trees and shrubs, while grass had sprung up and birds had doubtless nested there. "They are like the oases in the desert," Mark said. "They will afford us shelter and firewood," the professor added. And in short order they were encamped in a clump of fir trees with a huge fire of dry branches burning before them, its warmth diffused over the whole party. This grove of sturdy trees was backed close against the base of the cliff, and the rocky wall was sheer, mounting at least eight hundred feet above their heads. "I suppose no life could exist higher than this cliff, eh, Professor?" Jack Darrow asked, as they became comfortable in the fire's warmth and threw back their fur wraps. "I am not sure of that, Jack," returned the scientist. "From our experience in the _Snowbird_, since the eruption that threw us off into space, and while on the higher levels of air, we cannot doubt that at a thousand feet above this ice, at least, animal life would become extinct."