It was a moment of extreme peril, and what made it seem worse was the fact that the Rovers and the others could do nothing to save themselves. Rocks, small stones and dirt flew all around them, striking with loud noises the hoods and other metal parts of the automobiles, and even landing in the tonneaus of the larger cars.
"Hold up the robes! Protect yourselves with the robes!" yelled Dick, but before the ladies could heed his words the rain of rocks, small stones and dirt had come to an end.
"Great Cæsar! that's a fine happening!" groaned Tom, who had been hit on the shoulder by a fair-sized stone. He looked quickly at those in the car with him. "Any of you hurt?"
"I got hit in the head with something," returned Sam. "But it didn't hurt very much. How about you?" and he looked at Grace and at Tom's wife.
"I—I don't think I am hurt any," faltered Grace, as she looked at some stones and dirt on the robe over her lap.
"I'm all right," answered Tom's wife. "But, oh dear! something—I think it must have been a big stone—flew directly past my face!"
"I hope the others got off as well as we did," remarked Tom. "Let us go and see," and, suiting the action to the word, he left the machine, followed by his brother.
The second car had a dent in the hood made by a stone as big as Tom's fist. All those in the automobile had been hit by some smaller stones and also covered with loose dirt, but no one had been seriously injured, although Mrs. Laning declared that some of the dirt had entered her left ear and also her eye.
"Let me look at that eye," cried Mrs. Stanhope, as soon as she had recovered from the shock of the second blast. And then she went to work on the optic, and presently Mrs. Laning declared that the eye was as well as ever.
As Chester Waltham and his sister had been farther back on the road, around the turn of the cliff, they had not felt the effects of the second explosion excepting a slight shower of dirt which had covered the front of the runabout. But the young millionaire and his sister were greatly excited, and the former got out of his machine to run up to the Italian with the red flag and shake his fist in the man's face.