His First Flight by LIAM O’ FLAHERTY
The story “His First Flight” by “Liam O’ Flaherty” is about a young seagull .The seagull is afraid to fly. All his younger siblings regardless of their much shorter wings fly courageously while he is unable to gather the guts to fly and have faith in his own wings.
The young seagull became sad on seeing his parents making his younger siblings perfect in the art of flying. His parents rebuke and tease him for not even trying. They even call him a “coward” and force him to at least try.
They also pressurize him and tell him that they will leave him alone and starving if he does not learn how to fly. Next day, he is even left in isolation and on feeling hungry; he tries to look for the attention of his family members.
Only the mother, who is withering a fish trying to eat it, notices his son. The young seagull starts crying out of hunger hoping his mother would help him. When his mother came near him with the fish, he got thrilled.
But when his mother stopped in between, he got enraged out of hunger and took a jump at the fish, forgetting that he is afraid of flying. Finally, he took his first flight. All the family members celebrated his victory by encouraging him and dancing around him.
He also attempted floating in the sea that he was once afraid of. Thus, he could overcome his fright and realize that it is all in the mind.
Black Aeroplane by FREDERICK FORSYTH
The story “Black Aero plane” is about a pilot who is glad and contended flying over a city that is sleeping (at the night time). He is flying from Paris to London. While taking his flight, he dreams about a long vacation with his family.
He also fantasizes about the delectable breakfast he would have on landing. When he crosses Paris, he notices the dark clouds which were a sign of an upcoming storm. The right decision was to turn back to Paris to be safe.
But as he was taken away by his dreams and did not want to delay achieving them, he risked the life of his passengers and headed directly into the storm. Everything got dark, he was unable to see anything, all his direction instruments stopped working and he lost control of the plane.
When all the hopes were lost, he saw another plane whose pilot was keen to rescue them. The author was panicking as there was very less fuel left. The unidentified pilot guided them and took them out of the storm and vanished as soon as they saw light.
Upon landing, when he asked the lady in the control room about the other pilot, he got a shock of his life when she says that there was no other plane in the sky except for the one he was flying.
It was actually the author’s own self that helped him through the storm He was a good pilot, and it might have been his own self that came to his help.