Two Stories about Flying – Class 10 English Chapter 3 Notes & NCERT PDF

Overview

Chapter 3 has two stories about flying — His First Flight (a young seagull conquers his fear) and The Black Aeroplane (a pilot lost in storm clouds is guided to safety by a mysterious plane) — followed by two poems: Carolyn Wells's humorous *How to Tell Wild Animals* and John Berryman's reflective *The Ball Poem. The common thread: facing fear, loss and the unknown*.

Story I: His First Flight

The young seagull is alone on his ledge. His two brothers and his sister — whose wings were shorter than his own — had flown away the day before. He was afraid: "the great expanse of sea stretched down beneath… He felt certain that his wings would never support him." His parents upbraided him and threatened to let him starve unless he flew.

Twenty-four hours later, nobody had come near him. He watched his family teaching the others to skim the waves and dive for fish; his older brother caught his first herring. The family taunted him with his cowardice.

He had not eaten since the previous nightfall. His mother, standing on a high hump, tore at a piece of fish. "The sight of the food maddened him." He cried "Ga, ga, ga", begging for food. His mother flew across with a piece of fish but stopped just out of reach. Maddened by hunger, he dived at the fish and fell into space.

A "monstrous terror" seized him — but only for a minute. Then his wings spread outwards, the wind rushed against him, and he soared. His family flew around him screaming. He landed on "the green sea", his legs sank, and he was frightened — but he floated, and his family praised him and offered him scraps of dog-fish.

He had made his first flight.

Message: Fear is conquered by action; hunger — a natural need — pushed him past his fear. His mother's trick (holding food just out of reach) was a way of making him try.

Story II: The Black Aeroplane

The narrator (a pilot) is flying his old Dakota over France back to England at one thirty in the morning, dreaming of his holiday and "a good big English breakfast". Paris Control tells him to turn twelve degrees west; he switches to his second and last fuel tank.

About 150 kilometres past Paris he sees huge storm clouds "like black mountains". He cannot fly over them and does not have enough fuel to go around. "I ought to go back to Paris," he thinks — but he wants to get home. "I'll take the risk."

Inside the clouds everything is black. The compass turns round and round — dead. The other instruments and the radio are dead too. He is lost. Then he sees another aeroplane with no lights on its wings; the pilot waves, "Follow me". He follows "like an obedient child" for half an hour; fuel is left for only five or ten minutes. The black plane goes down; he comes out of the clouds and sees a runway. He is safe — but the black aeroplane has vanished.

The woman in the control centre laughs: "Another aeroplane? Up there in this storm? No other aeroplanes were flying tonight. Yours was the only one I could see on the radar."

So who helped me to arrive there safely without a compass or a radio, and without any more fuel in my tanks?

The risk: flying into the storm with little fuel instead of returning to Paris. The mystery is left open — was it a guardian angel, the pilot's own instincts, a ghost, or imagination? The book asks students to discuss.

Poem: How to Tell Wild Animals — Carolyn Wells

A humorous poem giving dangerous "rules" for identifying ('telling') wild animals:

Poetic licence: "dyin'" is pronounced to rhyme with "lion"; "lept" and "lep" are misspelt for rhyme and rhythm; "A novice might nonplus" breaks grammar (correctly: a novice might be nonplussed) to keep the rhyme with "thus".

Poem: The Ball Poem — John Berryman

A boy loses his ball — it bounces "merrily" down the street and into the harbour water. "No use to say 'O there are other balls'": an "ultimate shaking grief" grips him as he stands "rigid, trembling, staring down / All his young days into the harbour".

The poet "would not intrude on him" — "A dime, another ball, is worthless." The boy is learning "the epistemology of loss" — the nature of losing something — and responsibility "in a world of possessions": "balls will be lost always… And no one buys a ball back. Money is external." He must learn "how to stand up / Knowing what every man must one day know".

Message: Loss is part of growing up; the lesson cannot be bought with money, only learnt by bearing it.

Word Power

Board Exam Focus

Model answer outline — "What compelled the young seagull to fly?"

Model answer outline — "Who helped the narrator reach safely?"

Model answer outline — "What is the boy learning from the loss of the ball?" The epistemology of loss — that possessions are lost, money cannot buy back memories, and one must learn to stand up and bear loss.

Grammar & Language Focus

Common Mistakes