But some sure instinct warned her that there was no choice. This fearful icy bus racing ahead into the foggy darkness without any lights could come to only one end.
With another wild scream she plunged through the open door into the streamers of fog.
For a second she was snatched through space in the wake of the midnight bus. Then she struck earth with a thud which seemed to loosen every bone in her body and went bouncing and rolling along the ground like a rag doll hurled aside by an angry child.
She came to rest against a hedge and lay motionless, the taste of wet moldy earth in her mouth. She was still lying there, wondering how many bones she had broken, when a rending crash sounded somewhere ahead in the foggy darkness. She heard the tinkle of falling splinters of glass and then there was silence. Sudden, terrifying silence.
The silence endured, pregnant and somehow horrifying, and she wanted to scream again, but her mouth was full of dirt and screaming was difficult.
A light appeared; someone shouted; and she managed a groan.
A face materialized out of the fog, a kindly, anxious face.
The man bent over her. He spoke soothingly for a moment; he straightened up and called into the fog. "It's a girl, Alica! She's hurt! Bring a blanket! Quickly!"
In less than a minute a sturdy woman appeared. The two of them, the man and the woman, slid the blanket under Martha and lifted her up.
In another minute she was carried out of the fog into a cozy lighted house and tenderly laid on a couch.