Then suddenly in the first precipitous descent of a mighty hill the whole earth seemed to drop out from under the car. Down-down-down with incredible swiftness and smoothness the great machine went diving towards abysmal space! Up-up-up with incredible bumps and bouncings, trees, bushes, stonewalls went rushing to the sky!
Gasping surprisedly towards the Senior Surgeon the White Linen Nurse saw his grim mouth yank round abruptly in her direction as it yanked sometimes in the operating-room with some sharp, incisive order of life or death. Instinctively she leaned forward for the message.
Not over-loud but strangely distinct the words slapped back into her straining ears.
"If—it will rest your face any—to look scared—by all means—do so! I've lost control of the machine!" called the Senior Surgeon sardonically across the roar of the wind.
The phrase excited the White Linen Nurse but it did not remotely frighten her. She was not in the habit of seeing the Senior Surgeon lose control of any situation. Merely intoxicated with speed, delirious with ozone, she snatched up the Little Girl close, to her breast.
"We're flying!" she cried. "We're dropping from a parachute! We're—!"
Swoopingly like a sled striking glare, level ice the great car swerved from the bottom of the hill into a soft rolling meadow. Instantly from every conceivable direction, like foes in ambush, trees, stumps, rocks reared up in threatening defiance.
Tighter and tighter the White Linen Nurse crushed the Little Girl to her breast. Louder and louder she called in the Little Girl's ear.
"Scream!" she shouted. "There might be a bump! Scream louder than a bump! Scream! Scream! Scream!"
In that first over-whelming, nerve-numbing, heart-crunching terror of his whole life as the great car tilted up against a stone,—plowed down into the mushy edge of a marsh,—and skidded completely round, crash-bang— into a tree, it was the last sound that the Senior Surgeon heard,—the sound of a woman and child screeching their lungs out in diabolical exultancy!