Her rush and fury for that half-second threatened to plunge her, a mangled, flaming wreck, hundreds of feet down on the black, waiting rocks below the Palisades.
But engine-power and broad wings, skill of the hand at the levers, and the good fortune that watches over bold men, buoyed her again.
Suddenly she lifted.

Up at a dizzy angle she sped.
A thing of life, quivering, sentient, unleashed, the gigantic Eagle of the Sky--now in heroic flight toward the greatest venturing ever conceived by the brain of man--steadied herself, lifted on the wings of darkness, and, freed from her last bonds, leaped quivering and triumphant into the night..