Madeira, the great escape

A Prussian-blue expanse of water glittered under us and then, there was Madeira, a tiny nugget of rock in a foreverness of sea. As we watched, the plane banked sharply, steeply, alarmingly to the right and headed directly for the vertical green cliffs in front of us. The turn tightened, sharpened. Suddenly the cliffs were on our left and what looked like a terrifyingly short...