They shook the door handles. Of course they could not open the door, nor did the motorman heed them in any way.
Nan screamed aloud then. She saw the hands of the man slip from the handle of the brake and from the controller. The car seemed to leap ahead, gaining additional speed. The man slipped sideways from his stool and crumpled on the platform of the car.
The other girls did not see this. Even the conductor on the rear platform did not know what had happened. Only Nan and Rhoda realized fully the trouble.
"My dear!" gasped Nan, "we cannot get to him. And nobody can stop the car!"
She felt almost a sensation of nausea at the pit of her stomach. She did not weep or lose control of herself. But she felt frightfully helpless.
There seemed nothing to do but to stand there, clinging to the door handle, and watch the car reeling down the slope at a speed that promised disaster at the curve, if not before. Never in her life, in any time of emergency, had Nan Sherwood felt so utterly helpless.
The girl from the West said not a word. She, too, clung to the handle and stared through the pane at the crumpled figure of the motorman on the platform. But she remained thus only for a moment.
Suddenly she swung sideways and pushed Nan away from the door. The latter tumbled into the nearest seat. Hanging by her left hand to the door handle, Rhoda Hammond doubled her gloved right and smashed one of the glass panes in the door.
At the crash of glass Nan sprang to Rhoda's side, and everybody screamed. The conductor burst open the rear door and started forward. Rhoda paid no attention to the shouts behind her.
She reached through the broken pane and lifted the latch which held the two halves of the door together. She flung them apart and leaped down the single step to the enclosed front platform of the car, Nan close at her side.