Ahead of her Grace espied a stone wall, and an idea came to her, for her mind was working even if, up to that point, her body had been unable to perform any functions of self-preservation.
“If I can get my feet against that wall as we go over, I may be able to brace myself for a few seconds until something rips. Surely the silk ought to tear in those circumstances.”
Her monologue was cut short by a dive into a thick hedge that divided two vineyards. It seemed to Grace as if the raking she got was literally tearing her to pieces. Her clothing, when she came through, was in tatters, her body bore many deep scratches and cuts, and blood from a scalp wound was trickling down her face. There was one side of Grace Harlowe, though, that no amount of mauling could subdue—her spirit of pluck.
“I’ll win yet,” she gritted, coming to her feet, which were jerked from the ground, while she kept her gaze fastened on the stone fence at the bottom of the rows of terraces.
There was, of course, the possibility of bumping her head against the stone wall, as the major had once done, instead of striking it feet first. If the former were her luck the result would be serious, so the Overton girl tried to jockey the parachute, but with little more success than had she been trying the same tactics on an outlaw mustang.
The wind down between the hills in the Rhine Valley was a variable wind, that hurled her first in one direction, then in another. Just now she was headed for the river—and the stone wall.
Grace met the wall feet first, as she had hoped to do. The shock to her nervous system was terrific, and it seemed to the girl as if her limbs were being driven up through her body. The parachute merely hesitated. It took a mighty lunge with the assistance of a favoring blast of wind, and jumped up a few feet into the air, taking Grace Harlowe with it, then dived for the railroad tracks at the base of the bluff.
Grace went down the bank on her stomach, keeping her head up as well as she could. She was suddenly yanked to her feet and slammed viciously down on the roadbed, while the parachute wrapped itself about a telegraph pole and went to sleep, a heap of torn silk, fit only for souvenir neckties.