"Gradually this flow of water is going to wear away the ice—is going to loosen the entire glacier. And then, suddenly, with no warning at all, the field will plunge forward—break up, sink, grind itself to powder against these cliffs! And where will we be?"
"My goodness gracious gollyation!" cried Washington White. "I wants to git out o' disher right away—me an' Buttsy is ready ter go ter onct, an' no mistake!"
"What will you do—swim?" queried Jack, pointing to the river that was now washing the shore of the strip of soil on which they stood—a river which seemed to stretch the entire breadth of the glacier.
Jack and Mark were deeply impressed by the good sense of the professor's observations; and both Andy and Roebach were disturbed. They watched the disintegration of the ice with considerable worriment. It seemed to melt away much quicker during these hours of sunshine than it had on the previous occasion when the orb of day shone fully upon the surface of the island in the air.
The soil they had camped upon began to crumble away, too, for the heat was insidiously melting the ice under the morainial deposit. At the time which should be high noon—when the sun was directly overhead in its course—one end of the patch of soil, forest and all, slumped into the water with a loud crash, and at once the fierce current tore the rubbish apart and carried it onward to the brink of the crevasse, into the maw of which it fell.
"Wash is perfectly right in his statement," Jack Darrow said. "This is no place for any of us. As soon as the ice freezes up after the sun sets we must travel as fast as we can after the wolves."
"And I wish we could travel as fast as they can," muttered Andy Sudds.
"I wish we had Mr. Roebach's dogs and sleds," said Mark.
"All right. As long as you're wishing, though, why not wish for the right thing?" demanded Jack.
"And what is that, Master Jack?" asked the oil man.