CHAPTER XV

A BREAK IN THE GLACIER

"An earthquake?" repeated Tommy. "I thought they never had earthquakes in Alaska any more!"

"There are few weeks when there are no earthquakes!" was the reply.

"Well, when's it going to stop quaking?" asked Sam, springing out of the wagon. "It seems to me that we're getting a sleigh ride!"

The others followed his example, and stood in a moment within fifty feet of a slowly widening chasm which seemed to run from east to west across the entire moraine. They had just reached the timber line when the disturbance began, and now they saw trees a hundred feet in height and from six to eight inches in diameter dropping like matches into the great opening in the earth.

"Gee!" exclaimed Tommy. "The breath of the earthquake is enough to freeze one! I wish I had a couple of fur coats!"

The boy expressed the situation very accurately, for the opening of the moraine revealed the mighty ma.s.s of ice which lay under it. The glacier which had lain dead under the mat of vegetation for how many hundred years no one would ever know, showed far down in the great cavern, and a gust of wind sighing through the ragged jaws laid a chill over the little party.

Slowly the chasm widened. The ground under the boys' feet seemed to be unsteady. With a swaying motion it dropped off toward the coast, except at the very edge of the cavern, which seemed to be doubling down like a lip folded inside the mouth.

"It strikes me," Frank said, "that we would better be getting the team out of the track of that chasm! If we don't, the horses and wagon will take a drop."

Tommy and Sam both sprang forward, but it was too late! The southern line of the chasm seemed, to drop away for fifty feet or more, and trees and rocks crashed into the opening. The horses and the wagon went down with the rest. The screams of the frightened horses cut the air for an instant, and then all was silent.

"Rotten!" cried Tommy.

"Fierce!" shouted Sam.

"Awful!" declared Doctor Pelton.

Frank stood looking at the ever-widening chasm for a moment and then faced toward the coast.

"We'll have to walk around it now, I'm thinking," Tommy said, in a moment. "And a nice job we've got!"

As far as the eye could see the chasm extended, now growing in size, now contracting. A pale blue mist rose out of the opening, and the air was that of an August day no longer.

The sliding motion continued, and the chasm increased its width.

"Will it never stop?" asked Sam, almost thrown to the ground by a quick convulsion of the surface.

"Not just yet!" replied the Doctor gravely. "I can tell you in a moment just what has taken place. The weight of soil and timber on top of the dead glacier is shifting. The volcanic action tipped the moraine to the south and it broke, opening the way to the ice below. There is no knowing how serious the break may be. For all we know, the upheaval may send this whole moraine into the Gulf of Alaska."

"That's a cheerful proposition, too!" Tommy exclaimed.

"I wish I could get close enough to the chasm to look down," Sam observed. "I'll bet it's a thousand feet!"

"You'd better not try that!" advised Frank.

"The question before the house at the present moment," the doctor said, "is how I am going to get to my patient."

"Can't we get across this little crack in the earth?" asked Sam.

"That depends on the length of it!" answered Frank. "If the Doctor's theory is correct, this whole point has cracked away from the glacier above. In that case, we may be obliged to in some way work ourselves to the bottom of the chasm and up on the other side."

"We never can do that!" Sam insisted.

"Alaska is full of just such gorges as this one," Frank explained. "The whole country is resting on an icy foundation, and earthquakes find congenial conditions when it comes to cracking the crust. We don't know how long this chasm is, but the chances are that it isn't as long now as it will be!"

"Yes," agreed the doctor. "The chances are that the chasm started here today will continue to grow in length until it cuts across the point of land between Controller bay and the Bering glacier. I have known chasms of this character to travel fifty miles in a night, and I have known them to walk with such dignity that it took them ten years to go ten miles."

"But there must be some way of getting across it!" exclaimed Tommy.

"Everything has been going all right up to now, and we're not going to be kept away from the cabin by any such playful little earthquake as this!"

"We'll do the best we can," Frank said gravely.

The boys turned to the east and west and traversed the line of the chasm for long distances. In places the width was not more than thirty feet.

In others it was at least a hundred. Occasionally the walls of soil and ice sloped down at an angle of forty degrees, in other places the wall was vertical.

Within an hour the sound of running water was plainly heard, and the boys understood that the convulsion of nature had opened a reservoir somewhere in the glacier, and that the long chasm would soon become a rushing torrent. The prospect was discouraging.

"I wish we had an airship!" suggested Tommy, as they came back to the starting place, a few minutes before the night closed down upon the moraine. "It's provoking to think that we can't get across a little chasm not any wider than a street in old Chicago!"

"I think I could get along very well with a derrick!" said Sam.

After a long conference, it was decided to keep to the west and endeavor to pa.s.s around the chasm in that direction.

"We certainly can't remain here inactive," the doctor argued. "We've got to go one way or the other, and I think the chances are better toward the west!"

"It will soon be good and dark," cried Tommy, "and then we'll have to make some kind of a camp for the night."

"I've got a searchlight with me," suggested Frank.

"So've I," answered Tommy.

"I'll tell you one thing we forgot," Sam cut in. "You didn't make Jamison give up your automatics!"

"Don't you ever think we didn't," Tommy answered. "That is," he continued, "the officer made him give them up. At least he brought them back when he came from the jail!"

"Seems to me," Tommy added, looking at Frank critically, "that you've got some kind of a drag with the people at Cordova."

"Never mind that now," Frank replied. "What we need now is some kind of a drag to get us across this chasm."

The electrics illuminated only a narrow path, but the boys and the doctor made fairly good time as they advanced toward the west.

After walking at least a mile and finding no narrowing in the surface opening, the boys stopped once more for consultation.

While they stood on the edge of the chasm considering the situation, a bright blaze leaped up some distance to the north.

"Some one's burning green boughs!" exclaimed Tommy.