“Come along, fellows!” he shouted. “Hurry! We’ve got to get those people out! It may be a matter of life or death!”
In an instant the boys were running like deer to the scene of the accident.
They reached the shattered fence and peered over into the gully. The sides were steep, and the car had fallen a distance of thirty feet. It had rolled over and over, and now lay upside down amid a welter of broken glass and splintered wood and twisted steel. The engine was still going, and from the wreck arose groans and shouts that testified that the occupants of the doomed machine were still alive.
Sliding, scrambling, and often falling, the boys got down somehow into the ravine and rushed to the car.
Bob, who reached it first, with the others close on his heels, peered into one of the windows, and in the dim light made out what seemed to be four men thrown together in a heap. Two of them seemed to be stunned and made no movement, but the others were struggling desperately to extricate themselves from the tangled mass of bodies.
The car was an enclosed one, and the small windows had jagged splinters of glass sticking in the frames.
“We’re here to help you,” Bob shouted to the men inside. “Here, fellows,” he cried to his companions, “give me a hand with this door.”
They tugged at the door with all their might, but it had become so jammed that it resisted all their efforts. Again and again they pulled until it seemed as though their arms would be drawn out of their sockets, but in vain.
“Let’s try the one on the other side,” cried Bob, suiting the action to the word.
But here again the twisted framework refused to budge.