As if in response, and without paying her any other heed, the driver managed a new and positively fearful burst of speed. The bus thundered ahead until the fog seemed to be going by in white streamers of light. Fighting back rising hysteria, Martha stood up. "Driver! Please! We'll be killed!" For the first time the driver turned. In the poor light, his face under the visor of his driver's cap looked as blurred and white as the fog outside. "We're late on the run! We'll never make it!" He turned back to the wheel. Martha felt deadly fear coil up within her. The man was either drunk or mad and she sensed at once that any further attempt to reason with him would be futile. Clutching the seat handles, she began stumbling toward the front of the bus. At least she would be near the door, she decided, when--if--something happened. Once a sudden lurch of the bus almost threw her off her feet. Clutching the back of a seat, she regained her balance and staggered ahead. She could no longer force back the panic which was welling within her. She felt--she _knew_--that her life was in imminent and deadly danger. And when she finally reached the front of the bus and stared ahead into the fog, it was impossible to retain any lingering doubts about the lethal jeopardy of her position. The vehicle's single headlight had gone out. The bus was racing through the midnight fog in total darkness! With a scream, Martha turned toward the driver. He sat with a fixed stare, grimly intent, entirely oblivious to everything except the white wall of fog looming up immediately ahead. With the scream still on her lips, Martha whirled toward the door. It opened. Or perhaps it had been open. She was too terrified to know. But in any case there was the cold white fog streaming past outside. She hesitated momentarily. It took courage to hurl yourself into that rushing white wall, never knowing exactly what lay beyond it, beneath it--within it. But some sure instinct warned her that there was no choice. This fearful icy bus racing ahead into the foggy darkness without any lights could come to only one end. With another wild scream she plunged through the open door into the streamers of fog. For a second she was snatched through space in the wake of the midnight bus. Then she struck earth with a thud which seemed to loosen every bone in her body and went bouncing and rolling along the ground like a rag doll hurled aside by an angry child. She came to rest against a hedge and lay motionless, the taste of wet moldy earth in her mouth. She was still lying there, wondering how many bones she had broken, when a rending crash sounded somewhere ahead in the foggy darkness. She heard the tinkle of falling splinters of glass and then there was silence. Sudden, terrifying silence. The silence endured, pregnant and somehow horrifying, and she wanted to scream again, but her mouth was full of dirt and screaming was difficult.