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