Paul Mantz dashed to the rear of the plane and removed a thick clod of mud and grass from the tail skid.
Amelia calmly appraised the scene outside. About two hundred people, it seemed, had gathered to watch her attempted take-off. She could see that many of them, particularly Wheeler personnel, were armed with fire extinguishers. The women had handkerchiefs in their hands: Amelia hoped she wouldn’t have to bring them to tears with a crash. The ground underfoot was wet and soggy from the rain. The wind sock hung limp; the prevailing northeast wind had not only failed to prevail, it was dead.
Down the runway she fixed her eyes at a point along the marker flags where she would chop throttle and jam on the brakes if she could not lift the plane off the ground. Beyond that point and the end of the 6,000 feet of runway she saw the fields of sugar cane, and diagonally across from them, into the distance, the mountain peaks cushioned in low-hanging clouds.
Out of the corner of her eye, to the left and down the field, she caught a glimpse of three fire engines and an ambulance. With everybody so pessimistic, she decided, the least she could do was try.
She opened the throttle and held the brakes hard. The plane shook and vibrated against the prop wash, blasting back against wings, fuselage, and tail. She released the brakes. The Vega started forward, slow, sluggish, heavy with the extra fuel tanks.
She could see Ernie Tissot running alongside the wing: his feet squashing in the mud, a dead cigarette drooping from his lips, his eyes flashing fear in a dead-white face. “Cheer up, Ernie!” she wanted to call to him over the noise of the motor. “It will soon be over.”
Paul Mantz stood along the side, next to one of the marker flags. “Get that tail up,” he shouted. “Get that tail up!”
The plane strained against the sucking mud and then began to roll, now faster, through the mud. Amelia saw the flags flapping in a wind, but it was just the opposite of what she needed; it was a tail wind. She felt the tail come up, then the plane getting lighter. Suddenly the wheels hit a bump. The Vega jumped into the air, then began to settle toward the ground. Amelia jammed the throttle full forward. The engine caught the added power, and the plane lifted slowly into the air. AE grinned. She had made it.
She climbed to 5,000 feet, swung to the right, and headed out to Honolulu and Diamond Head. She had left behind 2,000 feet of unused runway.
“If I do not do a good job,” she had written to GP, just in case, “it will not be because the plane and motor are not excellent, nor because women cannot fly.”