A perfect deluge of flying mud and stones struck the car.
[CHAPTER XV]
A BLOCK ON THE ROAD
Ambulance Number Eight came to an abrupt halt. Although almost stunned—almost overwhelmed by the shock—Don Hale had managed to prevent it from crashing into a camion close ahead. He knew what had happened—a shell had landed on an ammunition wagon and fairly blown it to atoms. The lightning showed a huge, towering column of smoke spreading across the road; it also revealed horses lying prostrate in the mud, struggling desperately to rise, and other horses, wild and panic-stricken, kicking, plunging and endeavoring to break away from their restraining traces.
It took some moments before Don Hale could recover the use of his faculties sufficiently to stir from his inaction. His head was aching; his pulse throbbed and jumped; he felt as if he had been almost deafened by the explosion. A frightened horse which had managed to tear itself loose from the wreckage came running madly—furiously along, dragging a part of the traces and barely missing the ambulance as it clattered by.
"Come on, Chase!" yelled Don, springing to the ground.
The road was blocked, and drivers of all the vehicles in the immediate vicinity were hurrying as fast as they could through the mud and water toward the wreck ahead.
Without waiting to see whether Chase intended to join him or not, the boy started off. But he had only gone a dozen yards or so when another tremendous concussion caused him to stagger toward the nearest wagon. And in the grip of a fear he had never known before—a fear that robbed him of his strength—he leaned heavily against it. Half stunned and gasping, Don felt as though the end of all earthly things had come.
And now additional shells began bursting close to the road. Don had a vague, confused impression of seeing men dashing this way and that, but he himself, his faculties for the moment almost paralyzed, was held fast to the spot. And while he stood there in that helpless condition, his form shaking violently, the whole air seemed filled with pandemonium—a hideous whirring, screeching, screaming series of sounds, mingling in with terrific, thunderous blasts that sent violent tremors through the earth and made the huge camions rock and lurch as though they were about to topple into the roadway. Flashing jets of flame from the exploding shells cast a weird, unnatural light over the surroundings, and as if some mighty convulsion of nature was upheaving them, giant geysers of earth, mud and débris shot high in the air, while streams of iron and steel created havoc and destruction on every hand.