The French officer in charge of the party insisted on taking the steering wheel of the car, but Mlle. Duclos demonstrated that she was the only one who could get the best speed out of her car. Thus she forced them to let her stay in the place of danger.
Behind a pile of rocks that marked the meeting of the roads they lay in wait for the returning Germans.
Up the road came the Germans tugging at a rope that drew the great disabled French armored car. There were about forty of them, practically half a company, minus the men who had already fallen in the fight.
It was impossible for the five Frenchmen to cope with them in any ordinary fight. Only surprise and stratagem could hope to meet the situation.
III—SHE PLUNGES HER MOTOR INTO THE GERMANS
Mlle. Duclos immediately suggested that she should drive the car straight down on the unsuspecting Germans. Her opportunity for a great action had come. She seized it.
Down hill upon the toiling Germans flew the great 60-horsepower car. Straight as an arrow it went, with the weight of its two tons multiplied a hundred times by its speed and downward course.
All the Germans in its full path went down like ripe corn before the scythe. Straight it flew on without being swerved in the slightest degree by the human obstacles in its way.
Severed heads flew up in the air and arms and legs were chopped off by the flying car. Ghastly fragments of flesh and bone, a muddy mixture of blood and viscera, human remains that had nothing human about them, spattered the wheels and the body and all the occupants of the car.