It got higher and higher, and hotter and hotter.

The snow began to melt, crumble, shrink upon itself.

Up to within a couple of hundred yards of the hidden snowhouse, what had seemed to be solid land broke up and revealed itself as open sea, crowded with huge ice cakes, and walrus, and seals.

Sea birds came splashing and screaming.

And a wonderful thrill awoke in the air.
"That thrill got down into the snowhouse--the roof of which was by this time getting much thinner.