“Sit down, Jess,” ordered Roy, sternly, for the excited girl had seemed to be on the point of jumping from the car as it swayed and bumped toward what seemed certain annihilation, at a terrific rate.
Roy glanced desperately about him. The hill was enclosed by steepish banks with hedgerows at the top. But at one point he thought he saw a chance of escape.
As he despairingly changed the direction of the car two figures sprang from behind the hedge and gazed in amazement at the runaway auto.
“They’ll be killed to a certainty!” cried one.
Indeed it seemed so. With Jess in a dead faint and Roy looking straight into the dark face of danger the uncontrolled car tore onward toward the train. The engineer saw it now and blew his whistle shrilly.
CHAPTER V.
A NARROW ESCAPE.
But Roy’s quick eye had noted one loophole of escape,—a gap in the bank.
Truly it was taking a terrible risk to dash the car through it. The boy did not know what lay beyond, and in taking the chance he was running almost as great a risk of annihilation as if he kept straight on. But to have done the latter would have been to crash into a solid wall of moving freight cars as they bumped across the grade crossing.