"Hundreds of tons of it, anyway."

"How did the stuff get here?" asked Dan wonderingly.

Dick was now at the edge of the ice pile, and flashed the light
at the roof of the cavern.

"See the rifts in the rock up there?" he asked. "Water must have
leaked in here during the heavy winter rains. It was cold water,
too. Then, in extra cold spells, such as this country experiences,
the water must have frozen. As heat doesn't get in here in warm
weather the ice may have been here for generations. Fellows,
we may be looking upon ice that was here when George Washington
was a boy."

"I've read, somewhere," declared Tom soberly, "that icebergs that
float down from the polar regions in spring often represent ice
that is at least ten thousand years old. Fellows, some of this
very ice may have been here in this cave long, long before Julius
Caesar went into the soldiering business!"

That thought had somewhat of an awesome effect upon Dick & Co.
The four high school boys felt as though they were in the presence
of great antiquity.

"But the practical side of it," declared Tom, "is that we must
devise the best way of cutting some of this ice and getting it
across the lake to the camp."

"Oh, you can break off enough for making ice water," replied Dave