For an instant it seemed that the great car would turn over into the sump, but the next instant it was past. It struck the bottom of the hollow a mighty wallop, and bounced and upended to the steep pitch of the climb. Miss Drexel, seized by inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving wheels. Almost, but not quite, did the car stop, then, gathering way, with the others running alongside and shoving, it emerged on the hard road.
While they tossed the robes and coats and Miss Drexel's skirt into the bottom of the car and got Mrs. Morgan on board, Davies overtook them.
"Down on the bottom!--all of you!" he shouted, as he gained the running board and the machine sprang away. A scattering of shots came from the rear.
"Whose business is to live!--hunch down!" Davies yelled in Wemple's ear, accompanying the instruction with an open-handed blow on the shoulder.
"Live yourself," Wemple grumbled as he obediently hunched. "Get your head down. You're exposing yourself."
The pursuit lasted but a little while, and died away in an occasional distant shot.
"They've quit," Davies announced. "It never entered their stupid heads that they could have caught us on Aliso Hill."
"It can't be done," was Charley Drexel's quick judgment of youth, as the machine stopped and they surveyed the acute-angled turn on the stiff up-grade of Aliso. Beneath was the swift-running river.
"Get out everybody!" Wemple commanded. "Up-side, all of you, if you don't want the car to turn over on you. Spread traction wherever she needs it."
"Shoot her ahead, or back--she can't stop," Davies said quietly, from the outer edge of the road, where he had taken position. "The earth's crumbling away from under the tires every second she stands still."
"Get out from under, or she'll be on top of you," Wemple ordered, as he went ahead several yards.
But again, after the car rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to crack and crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature avalanche down the steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple had backed fifty yards down the narrow road did he find solid resting for the car. He came ahead on foot and examined the acute angle formed by the two zig-zags. Together with Davies he planned what was to be done.