"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!"