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 mass 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 pass 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.
"How do you know that?" asked Sam.
"Look at the white smoke!" answered Tommy. "I guess if you had made and
answered as many Boy Scout smoke signals as I have, you'd know how to
make a smudge."
"It's so bloomin' dark I couldn't tell whether the smoke is while or
black!" declared Sam. "I can see only the bulk of it."
"If it was good and black," Tommy answered, "we couldn't see it so
plainly. And, come to think about it," he added, laying a hand excitedly
on Frank's shoulder, "there are two columns of smoke."
"I see the two now," Frank answered. "One column has just begun to show.
You know what that means, of course!"
"It means a Boy Scout signal for assistance," replied Tommy.
Doctor Pelton turned to the boys with an anxious face.
"Do you really mean that?" he asked.
"Sure we do!" replied Tommy. "Two columns of smoke ask for help."
"Then there must be Boy Scouts in trouble on the other side of the
chasm!" the doctor concluded.
"That's about the size of it!" Frank exclaimed.
"Look here," Tommy declared, "we've just got to get across that crack! I
wonder if it would be possible to find walls so slanting that we could
pass down this side and up the other."
"Well, even if we did," Sam argued, "there's a rush of water at the
bottom. I don't see how we could get across that."
"I know how we can get across it if we find the walls accommodating,"
Tommy exclaimed. "You saw how the trees tumbled into the chasm, didn't
you? Well, if we can find a place where the moraine was heavily wooded,
we'll find a bridge of tree trunks across any water there may be at the
bottom! And the bridge may not be very far down, either!"
"Great head, little man!" laughed Frank.
"You ought to consider the matter very seriously before entering the
chasm at all," suggested the doctor. "Remember that it is uncertain as
to size and that the walls are liable to crumble."
"But see here," exclaimed Tommy, "there's a Boy Scout signal for help on
the other side, and we've just got to get across! For all we know, the
cabin may have been wrecked by the earthquake, and the boys may have
been injured in some way!"
"I'm game to go!" shouted Sam.
"Of course I'll go with you," the doctor went on. "In fact, I am
satisfied that you are doing the right thing in making the attempt to
cross. I only uttered a warning which we must all heed whenever we come
to a place where a crossing seems possible."
The boys soon discovered a place where the walls did not appear to be
very steep and where the mass of trees which had fallen completely
covered the bottom. Then, cautiously feeling their way, they crept down.