A moment later they were all in peril of their lives as a mass of the mountain, showing blue in the sun, slid toward them.
[CHAPTER XXVIII]
A DISCOVERY
Just what happened neither the Motor Boys nor the others knew exactly. Nor did they take any note of the order in which for the next few moments some surprising things took place. They all remembered up to the point where Bob yelled something about the landslide coming their way. Then all was confusion.
For not only did the landslide come their way, but it came directly over them, overwhelming them; and only for the fact that the horses had been tethered some distance away from where the blue rock started to slide, they, also, would have been carried down the side of the mountain.
“Here she is!” yelled Jerry, and the next instant he and the others were carried away.
Down the mountain they went, being pushed ahead of the landslide itself, and it was this alone that saved them from instant death. The slide of that peculiar blue rock had started perhaps half a mile up Thunder Mountain. As it gathered weight and momentum it pushed ahead of it sections of earth, with rocks, trees and bushes.
The Motor Boys, with Bill and Tinny, had been standing on the edge of the trail which was gashed into ridges and furrows by the rain and landslide of the night before. And the section of ground on which they were standing was carried along, pushed as an engine pushes a string of freight cars ahead of it.
Had the motion of the landslide been regular it would not have been so dangerous, but it was far from even. Like the undulations of the sea, it moved up and down, shifting this way and that, making the boys and the two men dizzy and ill with the peculiar motion.