There came a long, low rumbling sound, apparently moving from east to west, followed by a tipping of the moraine which almost brought the horses to their knees.
"It would never answer," Tommy grumbled, "for us to make a trip to Alaska without bunting into a glacier ready to smash up things!"
"That's not a glacial slide!" Frank said. "It's an earthquake!"
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.