Gabriel's speed was terrific. With stupefying suddenness,
the _epervier_ loomed up ahead of him.
"Now!" he shouted. "Take this, from me!"
Half rising from his seat, he hurled his last remaining projectile full
at Slade, then wrenched his own 'plane off sharply to the left.
A thunderous concussion and a dazzling burst of light told him his
chance shot had been effective.
He got a second's vision of a shattered black mass, a tangle of girders,
wires, collapsed planes, that seemed to hang a moment in midair--of
whirling bodies--of wreckage indescribable. Then the broken debris
plunged with awful speed and vanished through the red-glowing mist.
Even as he shuddered, sickened at the terrible, though necessary deed,
the deed which alone could save him from swift death, an overwhelming
air-wave from the terrible explosion struck his speeding machine, the
machine captured in the Great Smokies from the Air Trust itself.
It heeled over like an unballasted yacht under the lash of a hurricane.
Vainly Gabriel jerked at wheel and levers; he could not right it.
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