And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black as ebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads of the covered winches, the foot of a mast.

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Pointing towards a bluish mass of ice in a distant valley, he explains that in the 1930s the Black Rapids Glacier became the fastest moving ever recorded, sometimes advancing as much as 200 feet a day.

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