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.
As it seemed to come under control, a stay snapped.

The 'plane swooped, yawned forward and stuck its nose into an air-hole, caused by the vast, uprising smoke and heat of the huge conflagration beneath.
Then, lost and beyond all guidance, it somersaulted, slid away down a long drop and, whirling wildly over and over, plunged with Gabriel into the glowing, smoking, detonating void!.