"What is the matter with you?" cried Helen, standing up in the tonneau of the big car, when Tom pulled up suddenly to keep from running the maroon roadster down. "Don"t you see it is going to rain? We want to get somewhere."
"I guess we have got somewhere," responded Jennie Stone. "As far as we are concerned, this seems to be our stopping place. The old car won"t go."
Tom jumped out and hurried forward to join Henri in an examination of the car"s mechanism.
"What happened, Colonel?" he asked the Frenchman, worriedly.
"I have no idea, _mon ami_," responded Marchand. "This is a puzzle, eh?"
"First of all, let"s put up the tops. That rain is already beating the woods on the summit of the hill."
The two young men hurried to do this, first sheltering Jennie and then together dragging the heavy top over the big car, covering the baggage and pa.s.sengers. Helen and Ruth could fasten the curtains, and soon the women of the party were snug enough. The drivers, however, had to get into rain garments and begin the work of hunting the trouble with the roadster.
The thunder grew louder and louder. Flashes of lightning streaked across the sky overhead. The electric explosions were soon so frequent and furious that the girls cowered together in real terror. Jennie had slipped out of the small car and crowded in with her chums and Aunt Kate.
"I don"t care!" she wailed, "Henri and Tom are bound to take that car all to pieces to find what has happened."
But they did not have to go as far as that. In fact, before the rain really began to fall in earnest, Tom made the tragic discovery. There was scarcely a drop of gasoline in the tank of the small machine. Tom hurried back to the big car. He glanced at the dial of the gasoline tank. There was not enough of the fluid to take them a mile! And the emergency tank was turned on!
It was at this point that he stated his opinion of the trustworthiness of garage workmen.
CHAPTER X
A WILD AFTERNOON
This was a serious situation. Five miles behind the automobile party was the nearest dwelling on this road, and Tom was sure that the nearest gasoline sign was all of five miles further back!
Ahead lay more or less mystery. As the rain began to drum upon the roofs of the two cars, harder and harder and faster and faster, Tom got out the road map and tried to figure out their location. Ridgeton was ahead somewhere--not nearer than six miles, he was sure. And the map showed no gas sign this side of Ridgeton.
Of course there might be some wayside dwelling only a short distance ahead at which enough gasoline could be secured to drive the smaller car to Ridgeton for a proper supply for both machines. But if all the gasoline was drained from the tank of the big car into that of the roadster, the latter would be scarcely able to travel another mile. And without being sure that such a supply of gas could be found within that distance, why separate the two cars?
This was the sensible way Tom put it to Henri; and it was finally decided that Tom should start out on foot with an empty can and hunt for gasoline, while Colonel Marchand remained with the girls and Aunt Kate.
When the two young men ran back through the pouring rain to the big car and announced this decision, they had to shout to make the girls hear. The turmoil of the rain and thunder was terrific.
"I really wish you"d wait, Tom, till the tempest is over," Ruth anxiously said. "Suppose something happened to you on the road?"
"Suppose something happened to _us_ here in the auto?" shrieked Helen.
"But Henri Marchand will be with you," said her brother, preparing to depart. "And if I delay we may not reach Boston to-night."
"Oh!" gasped Jennie. "Do please find some gas, Tom. I"d be scared to death to stay out here in these woods."
"One of the autos may bite her," scoffed Helen, ready to scorn her own fears when her friend was even more fearful. "These cars are the wildest thing in these woods, I warrant."
"Of course you must do what you think is best, Tom," said Ruth, gravely.
"I hope you will not have to go far."
"No matter how long I am gone, Ruth, don"t be alarmed," he told her. "You know, nothing serious ever happens to me."
"Oh, no!" cried his sister. "Of course not! Only you get carried away on a Zeppelin, or are captured by the Germans and Ruth has to go to your rescue. We know all about how immune you are from trouble, young man."
"Thanks be! there are no Boches here in peaceful New England," exclaimed Jennie, after Tom had started off with the gasoline can. "Oh!"
A sharp clap of thunder seemingly just overhead followed the flash that had made the plump girl shriek. The explosion reverberated between the hills in slowly pa.s.sing cadence.
Jennie finally removed her fingers from her ears with a groan. Aunt Kate had covered her eyes. With Helen they cowered together in the tonneau.
Ruth had been sitting beside Tom in the front seat when the cars were stalled, and now Henri Marchand was her companion.
"I heard something then, Colonel," Ruth said in a low tone, when the salvo of thunder was pa.s.sed.
"You are fortunate, Mademoiselle," he returned. "Me, I am deafened complete"."
"I heard a cry."
"Not from Captain Cameron?"
"It was not his voice. Listen!" said the girl of the Red Mill, in some excitement.
Despite the driving rain she put her head out beyond the curtain and listened. Her face was sheltered from the beating rain. It would have taken her breath had she faced it. Again the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed on its trail.
Ruth did not draw in her head. She wore her raincoat and a rubber cap, and on her feet heavy shoes. The storm did not frighten her. She might be anxious for Tom"s safety, but the ordinary chances of such a disturbance of the elements as this never bothered Ruth Fielding at all.
As the rolling of thunder died away in the distance again, the splashing sound of the rain seemed to grow lighter, too; or Ruth"s hearing became attuned to the sounds about her.
There it was again! A human cry! Or was it? It came from up the hillside to the north of the road on which the automobiles were stalled.
Was there somebody up there in the wet woods--some human creature lost in the storm?
For a third time Ruth heard the wailing, long-drawn cry. Henri had his hands full soothing Jennie. Helen and Aunt Kate were clinging together in the depths of the tonneau. Possibly their eyes were covered against the glare of the lightning.
Ruth slipped out under the curtain on the leeward side. The rain swept down the hillside in solid platoons that marched one after another from northwest to southeast. Dashing against the southern hillside, these marching columns dissolved in torrents that Ruth could hear roaring down from the tree-tops and rushing in miniature floods through the forest.
The road was all awash. The cars stood almost hub-deep in a yellow, foaming flood. The roadside ditches were not deep here, and the sudden freshet was badly guttering the highway.
Sheltered at first by the top of the big car, Ruth strained her ears again to catch that cry which had come down the wind from the thickly wooded hillside.
There it was! A high, piercing scream, as though the one who uttered it was in great fear or agony. Nor did the cry seem to be far away.
Ruth went around to the other side of the automobile. The rain was letting up--or seemed to be. She crossed to the higher ground and pushed through the fringe of bushes that bordered the road.
Already her feet and ankles were saturated, for she had waded through water more than a foot in depth. Here on the steep hillside the flowing water followed the beds of small rivulets which carried it away on either side of her.
The thick branches of the trees made an almost impervious umbrella above her head. She could see up the hill through the drifting mist for a long distance. The aisles between the rows of trees seemed filled with a sort of pallid light.