OH, SHOOT! 



We heard the sound of that tidal wave as 

 it bore down upon the fifty-foot bluff which 

 we had just passed. And we now recognized 

 the force which had cut it out a quarter 

 mile of it and had changed a slope into a 

 perpendicular wall up which no man could 

 possibly have climbed. To be caught in 

 such a trap would have been to perish cer- 

 tainly. We saw the wave engulf the land, 

 then surge over and beyond it up into the 

 alder trees, which swayed and whipped each 

 other frantically. It was terrific, appalling, 

 unspeakably tremendous. 



We found ourselves straining at our boat in 

 an endeavor to avoid the path of that swell, 

 but the furious current all but killed it before 

 it reached upstream to us and we were merely 

 bruised and battered as before. Had we been 

 ten minutes later, however, it would have 

 meant our destruction. Twice more did this 

 thing occur before we had covered those 

 treacherous three miles along the glacier, but 

 each time we were above the scene and the 

 racing current saved us. 



I think we grew somewhat frightened, 

 walled in against that Presence by the steep 

 banks; at any rate, at every explosion we 



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