Immediately he leaped from his wheel and quickly turned it into the old road.
“I am close upon him!” thought Frank. “Not a moment is to be wasted.”
He mounted again and drove onward, as fast as he could ride, over the unused road. Through a long opening amid the trees he caught a glimpse of another rider just disappearing from view.
“There he is!”
A terrible crash of thunder drowned his words. There was a hush in the woods—the hush before the storm.
The road grew steeper and steeper, but Frank rode at furious speed, for something told him there was danger that he would be given the slip once more by Flynn. Ahead of him the road curved out of sight, but he knew the foot of the steep hill must be near. He managed to keep his feet on the pedals, but did not try to hold the flying bicycle in check.
Round the curve he sped, and then a gasp of alarm escaped his lips, for directly ahead of him was a small river, and where it had been spanned at one time by an old bridge, only the rotting, sagging timbers were left. The planking had been torn away, leaving only the stringers.
He was right upon the ruined bridge, and, finding he could not stop, he felt certain that he was rushing to certain destruction. And nowhere before him could he see Parker Flynn. He had been tricked by the rascal, who might be watching him at that moment.
At the very last moment, Frank turned his wheel so that it struck one of the stringers, to which broken pieces of planking still clung. In a most remarkable manner, he held the wheel steady, and straight along that stringer it shot. Even then, in that moment of peril, he remembered seeing a bicycle that lay under the water at the bottom of the river.
How he crossed that stringer he could not tell, but he did so, reaching the other side in safety. It was a most miraculous feat, and was more of a chance than anything else.