An officer waved a sword and shouted a sharp word.
"Stop, nothing!" John said through gritted teeth, remembering bloody overalls and sprawling limbs gripping battered rifles.
He put his full weight on the accelerator pedal and the huge machine throbbed and rumbled into life, a gleaming, roaring gray streak.
"Duck down below the windshield, dear," he said to Celestine. Never before had he used that word, though he had often felt like it.
The Roman soldiers quailed as they saw the big car hurtling toward them, but they had no time to retreat. The bumper struck the mass of men with a thud and a crash of metal. Dark spatters appeared on the windshield and things crunched sickeningly. The car swerved and swung, dizzily, and John's forehead bumped against the glass ahead of him, but his hands hung to the wheel. The fenders crumpled and the wheels bumped over soft things. Just as he thought the car would overturn, he found himself flying smoothly down a clear road; in his windshield mirror a squirming mass on the road was becoming rapidly too small to see.
He laughed a hard laugh.
"They didn't know enough to jab a sword into a tire," he said grimly.
And, there to their left, was the tiresome galley, sliding down the river. The countryside was green and peaceful; in a moment even the galley was out of sight. Except for the crumpled fenders and the leaking radiator it seemed that they had just awakened from an unpleasant dream and found that it had not been true.
They talked little on the way to Omaha; but they could not help talking some. Who were these men? Where did they come from? What did it mean, the piles of dead, the sickening river of blood?
They must hurry with the news, so that help would be sent to the stricken area.