The young man reached up and grasped with his strong, sinewy hands the straps which hung from the supports above his head.
"Quick now!" he said to his almost paralyzed companion; "stand up, put your arms about my neck, and cling to me for your life."
She looked helplessly up into his face; it seemed as if she had not the power to move—to obey him.
With a despairing glance from the window and a groan of anguish, he released his hold upon the straps, seized her hands again, and locked them behind his neck.
"Cling! Cling!" he cried, in a voice of agony.
The tone aroused her; strength came to her, and she clasped him close—close as a person drowning might have done.
He straightened himself thus, lifting her several inches from the floor of the car, seized again the straps above, and swung himself also clear, hoping thus to evade somewhat the terrible force of the shock which he knew was so near.
He was not a second too soon; the crash came, and with it one frightful volume of agonizing shrieks and groans; then all was still.
The car had been dashed into thousands of pieces, burying beneath the debris twenty human beings.
A group of horrified spectators had gathered in the street at the base of the plane when it was rumored that the car had lost its grip upon the cable, and had watched, with quaking hearts and bated breath, the awful descent.