"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.