So terrific was the speed, it was like traveling on the back of a whirlwind, if such a thing can be imagined.
“There’s no stopping now,” thought Lathrop, as with a brief prayer on his lips the huge machine hustled onward like a shot from a cannon. On and on it dashed.
Showers of rocks hurled upward from its wheels were blurred discs at the pace they were making.
And now the bridge and the dark gap loomed right in front of him.
Clenching his teeth tightly, the boy gripped the steering wheel till the varnish came off on his hands. He felt the machine bound forward onto the narrow span—felt it sag beneath the unaccustomed weight.
Everything grew blurred. All he thought of now was clinging to that steering wheel to the end.
His hat had flown off long ago—torn from his head by the wind generated by the awful speed.
And now the gap itself was there. Seen momentarily, dark, forbidding—a door to death.
Suddenly, just as it seemed he was about to be plunged into the depths, the boy felt the huge machine rise under him as lightly as if it had been a feather.
It shot upward like a stone impelled by a giant’s fist, hesitated for a moment at the apex of its spring, and then crashed down onto the bridge.
It was several hundred feet before Lathrop could control the auto, and when he did, and the others rushed up, they found a white-faced boy at the wheel, who was as nearly on the verge of a collapse as a healthy lad can be.
The supplies that had been left on the bridge were hastily loaded into the auto, and the party once more took their seats. Lathrop had by this time quite recovered, and, in reply to all the encomiums heaped on him by the others, could only reply:
With Billy Barnes at the wheel the auto chugged off once more on its errand of rescue.
Suddenly, leading up a woodland track to their right, Billy Barnes spied auto tracks.
“That must be Barr and his crowd,” shouted Billy, turning the auto up the track that converged from the main road at this point.
Rapidly and almost silently the auto made its way over the beds of pine needles that covered the rough roadway. With the reduced speed at which they were proceeding the approach of the machine could have been hardly audible to a strange group onto which the auto party a second later emerged.