Safe now in our car which was slackening its terrific speed, I looked back. "They've been thrown!" I cried. "We're all right."
On the edge of the water, just covered by some wreckage, the chauffeur lay motionless. The masked man crawled from under the wreckage and looked at him a moment.
"Dead!" he exclaimed, still mechanically gripping a rifle in his hand.
Angrily he raised it at us and fired.
A moment later, some other men gathered from all directions about him, each armed.
"Don't mind the wreck," he cried, exasperated. "Fire!"
A volley was delivered at us. But the distance was now apparently too great.
We were just congratulating ourselves on our escape, when a stray shot whizzed past, striking a piece directly out of the head of the steering-post, almost under Elaine's hands.
Naturally she lost control, though fortunately we were not going so fast now. Crazily, our car swerved from side to side of the road, as she vainly tried to control both its speed and direction. On the very edge of the ditch, however, it stopped.
We looked back. There we could see a group of men who seemed to spring out of the woods, as if from nowhere, at the sound of the shots. A shout went up at the sight of the bullet taking effect, and they ran forward at us.