"Got you?" cried the major, still pumping lead. He paused, jerked Alden's automatic from its holster and thrust it into the captain's hand, now red.
Alden, a bit pale but quite impassive, opened fire through the jagged hole in the double pane. Accurately the captain fired at dark figures. One fell. Another staggered; but as the machine swept on, they lost sight of it.
Men rose up before the rushing airship. One of the great gates began to swing shut, far at the end of the track. The Master laughed again, with the wind whipping at his hair. "Full speed ahead!" he shouted into the telephone.
The Nissr leaped into a swifter course. Then all at once she skidded clear of the track, slanted upward, breasted the air. Her searchlight blazed. All along her flanks, fire-jets spangled the night. Cries echoed from her, from the great stockade.
The Master gave her all the lift the farthest wrench of the levers would thrust on her. The gate was almost shut now—would she clear it?
Below, track, earth, everything was spinning in and in. Ahead, above, yawned vastnesses. The Master could no longer see the gate. A second of taut thrill—
Crash!
The Nissr quivered, staggered, yawed away. The forward starboard float had struck. A faint yell rose as someone, hurled backward by the shattered débris of the gate, plunged down the cliff.
For half a second, the giant plane reeled over the abyss. 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.