Two Stories about Flying · Class 10 English · First Flight: 135 MCQs with answers

The sight of the sea far below and his certainty that his wings would not support him

The great expanse of sea stretched miles down, and he felt certain his wings would never hold him, so he bent his head and ran back to his hole.

To the small hollow beneath the ledge where the family slept

The retreat into a sleeping hole is a small, exact detail that makes his fear feel like an ordinary habit rather than a dramatic crisis.

Let him starve on his ledge

Starvation is the threat, and the story later makes it real: nobody comes near him for twenty-four hours, and hunger is what finally moves him.

His mother

She stood on a little high hump on the plateau with her white breast pushed out, and it is her attention that eventually gets him off the ledge.

Hunger — he dived at the fish and fell outwards into space

He never decides to fly. The flight begins as an accident of appetite, which is the most honest idea in the story.

A monstrous terror, with his heart standing still and no sound reaching him

The story gives fear one concentrated beat — silence and a stopped heart — before the body takes over.

A slight dizziness

'He was no longer afraid. He just felt a bit dizzy.' Terror is exchanged for a mild physical sensation, not for triumph.

Scraps of dog-fish

Food arrives the moment he has flown, which completes the bargain his mother had opened with the withheld fish.

1 and 2 only

The story ends on the water, with the five-word line that he had made his first flight. He never returns to the ledge.

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His holiday and being with his family

These ordinary pleasures are what make him unwilling to turn back later, so the story plants them in the opening paragraph.

Turn twelve degrees west

It is a routine navigational instruction, and he follows it exactly — checking his map and compass before making the turn.

About 150 kilometres

The distance matters because it places him too far along to return easily and too far from England to continue safely.

Black mountains standing across the sky

Mountains are solid and unpassable, which is exactly the problem: he cannot climb over them and cannot go round them.

Everything turned black and the old Dakota jumped and twisted in the air

The story describes a machine being thrown about in darkness, with no external reference of any kind available to the pilot.

It was turning round and round and round

A spinning compass means the instrument itself has failed, which leaves him with no way of knowing which way he is heading.

Quite near him in the black clouds, with no lights on its wings

No lights on the wings is an odd and important detail, since an aircraft flying legally at night would be showing them.

Two long straight lines of lights — a runway

The two lines of lights are the edges of a runway, which is the first thing he has been able to see since entering the storm.

The sky was empty and the black aeroplane was gone

The helper leaves the moment the runway is in sight, which is part of what makes the ending impossible to explain.

To find out where he was and who the other pilot was, so that he could say thank you

His purpose is gratitude, which is what makes the woman's answer so disconcerting to him.

With two unanswered questions about who helped the narrator and who the pilot was

The questions are left standing, and no character in the story offers any answer to them.

Who was flying the black aeroplane

The narrator asks it himself in the last lines, and the story closes without an answer from anybody.

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One is entirely known to the reader; the other is never identified

We watch the mother's plan working from the outside, while the other pilot flies without lights, gives no name and disappears.

The first is third-person and observed; the second is first-person and felt from inside

That difference of viewpoint is what makes one story feel watched and the other feel experienced.

How do the two stories differ in the way help is given to the central figure?

Comparison questions ask you to set the two halves against each other; the other three are factual questions about one story only.

The two are meant to be read as a pair and compared

The plural title and the two questions in the chapter's introduction both invite comparison from the first page.

It shows that his failure to fly was caused by fear rather than by any physical limitation

One clause removes every physical excuse: the best-equipped bird is the only one still on the cliff, so the obstacle must be in his mind.

1 and 2 only

He never left the ledge at all. Watching the others succeed, and being unable to join them, is precisely his situation.

To taunt him with his cowardice

The taunting is deliberate pressure, and it fails as completely as the scolding and the threats do.

To attract his family's attention after they had ignored him

It is a small performance aimed at his family, and the story notes drily that they took no notice of him.

His hunger had reached the point where it could overpower his fear

The story is building one force strong enough to beat another, and the word 'maddened' returns at the exact moment he dives.

She screamed back derisively

Her mockery is part of the family's pressure; only afterwards, when he keeps calling plaintively, does she pick up a piece of fish.

He hesitated, puzzled that she should stop just out of his reach

The pause is important: he does not understand the tactic, which is why what follows is instinct rather than a plan.

His wings spread outwards and the air came driving against his chest, his stomach and his wings

Flight is described through sensation rather than sight — the pressure of air on particular parts of his body — which is how the reader feels it happening.

That he had not always been able to fly

Twenty-four hours of misery disappear the moment the skill arrives, which is the story's quiet comment on how fear works.

They fly around him calling and circling — curveting, banking, soaring and diving

The scolding stops instantly. The same birds that taunted him now escort him, which shows the taunting was a method rather than a judgement.

He had dropped his legs to stand on the sea and they sank into the water

He mistakes the green sea for a solid floor, which is the last and most comic of his misjudgements.

His feet sank, then his belly touched the water and he sank no farther

He is too tired and hungry to rise, so the discovery that water holds him is another thing his body works out for him.

They combined teaching, scolding, taunting and temptation to get him to fly

Each method is used in turn, which is why the story can be read as being about parenting as much as about a bird.

It builds the hunger that makes his eventual dive unavoidable

Time and appetite are the mechanism of the plot. Without the day of starvation, the fish would not have been worth the risk.

Fear often ends only after one has been forced to begin, not before

Encouragement, scolding and taunting all fail; the fear ends a moment after the dive, once his wings are already open.

A sister with much shorter wings had already flown the day before

The others are pressures on him; only the sister's flight proves that his body was capable of exactly what his mind refused to attempt.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should cover, in sequence, at least six of: his solitude and fear; the sister's shorter wings; the twenty-four hours without food and the family's teaching of the others; the taunting from the opposite plateau; the mother eating in view and answering derisively; the halt w…

So that the danger appears inside an ordinary flight rather than a doomed one

Moon, stars and an empty sky make the opening as safe as flying gets, so the storm arrives as an interruption of routine rather than as an expected disaster.

He did not have enough fuel to go north or south around it

Fuel closes off both detours, which is why only two real options remain: return to Paris, or fly straight through.

He flies into the storm although he knows he ought to turn back, because he wants to get home for his holiday and his breakfast

He states the correct decision to himself and then rejects it, which is the point: the motive is small, ordinary and human.

1 and 2 only

Inside the clouds it was impossible to see anything outside the aeroplane at all, which is why the loss of the instruments was so serious.

He turned his face towards him, lifted one hand and waved him on

The narrator's radio was dead, so everything passes between them by sight alone — a face, a hand and a change of course.

So that it would be easier for the narrator to follow him

The manoeuvre is deliberate and considerate, which is what convinces the narrator that the stranger knows he is lost and is helping.

Enough for five or ten minutes

The margin is tiny, which is why he starts to feel frightened again just before the stranger begins to descend.

The aeroplane had nearly cost him his life in the storm

After being thrown about in the dark with dead instruments and nearly empty tanks, leaving the machine behind is a relief.

That no other aeroplanes were flying that night and his was the only one on the radar

Her statement is limited to what she saw on her screen, and she says nothing at all about fuel — a detail often misremembered.

He is asking about an aeroplane that, as far as her radar shows, never existed

From where she sits, a pilot has walked in asking to thank someone who was not there, which is why the reaction is bewilderment before amusement.

1 and 2 only

It never lands. The sky is empty the moment the narrator turns to look for it, which is the detail the ending depends on.

It flew through a violent storm without any lights on its wings

Navigation lights exist precisely so that aircraft can be seen at night. Flying dark in a storm is not something an ordinary pilot would do.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the sequence and include at least six of: the clear night, the Dakota and the time; the call to Paris Control and the turn twelve degrees west; the switch to the second and last tank; the storm clouds 150 km past Paris and why he could not avoid them; his kno…

One fears attempting something for the first time; the other fears losing control of something familiar

The pairing sets a beginner against an expert, which lets the lesson show that skill changes what fear is about rather than removing it.

The seagull's danger comes from inexperience; the pilot's comes from a decision he knew to be wrong

One is trapped by what he has not yet learned; the other walks into trouble with his eyes open, for a holiday and a breakfast.

The mother withholds help so her son must act, while the stranger supplies everything and asks nothing

Their methods are exact opposites, and the contrast is much of the reason the two stories sit well together.

1 and 2 only

Only the first story explains itself. The second deliberately withholds the identity of the rescuer.

His First Flight, whose narrator reports facts the bird could not know

The third-person narrator can measure the sister's wings against the seagull's; the pilot's first-person account can never exceed what he himself knew.

It ends after the action has begun, not before

The seagull's terror lasts a single moment before his wings open; the pilot's fright passes only when the runway lights appear.

A green sea that looks solid, and storm clouds that look like mountains

In each story something fluid is made to look like solid ground, and in each case the character misjudges it.

1 and 2 only

Neither is thanked. The stranger disappears before the narrator can speak to him, and the seagull is in no position to thank anyone.

Both stories are about flight and fear, but one concerns a beginner who cannot start and the other an expert who should have stopped

A comparison should open on the axis of comparison itself; the other options announce a summary rather than an argument.

The marks are for the comparison, which such an answer never actually makes

Two summaries placed side by side leave the reader to do the comparing, which is precisely the work the question asked for.

Each faces something he cannot get through by himself

One cannot leave a ledge and the other cannot navigate a storm; in both, another creature has to make the difference.

He is never identified and leaves no trace on any record

No lights, no radio call, no name, and nothing on the radar — the story keeps him entirely outside verification.

That beginnings are rarely made alone and rarely made calmly

One character is manoeuvred into his first flight and the other is led out of a storm, and in both cases terror comes before confidence.

The seagull's ordeal lasts twenty-four hours; the pilot's crisis lasts under an hour

One is a long siege of hunger and fear on a ledge, the other a compressed emergency between a storm cloud and a runway.

What does it take to help someone who is unable to act?

Both stories are studies in that question, and they answer it in opposite ways — by withholding and by leading.

Different as they are, both stories show that the first step is taken with help and that calm arrives only after it

A comparison closes by naming what survives the differences, which is the reasoning an examiner is looking for.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should compare point by point, covering at least four of: the two kinds of fear, beginner and expert; the causes of danger, inexperience and a chosen risk; the two helpers and their opposite methods; the known and unknown identity of the helpers; the resolved and open endi…

She halted with her wings motionless, the fish almost within reach of his beak

The precision matters: she stops rather than retreats, leaving the fish close enough to be worth a lunge and far enough that the lunge must become flight.

A is true, but R is false

She never pushes him; he dives at the fish of his own accord. The assertion stands, the reason is invented.

Its flatness leaves the reader to notice how ordinary and unheroic the achievement was

Five words, no comment. The writer refuses to celebrate, which matches a flight that began with a dive at a piece of fish.

Fear on the ledge → terror as he falls → dizziness → forgetting he could not fly → fright on the water

Tracking the emotions in order is the most reliable way to answer any extract question from this story.

She is deliberate: mockery, then food, then a calculated halt just out of reach

Every one of her actions is aimed at the same result, and the halt is the most calculated of them: help offered up to a point and then withheld.

It lets the reader experience the discovery from inside the bird's body

Wind on breast feathers and wingtips cutting the air make the moment physical, so the reader learns that he is flying at the same instant he does.

The family that taunted him for cowardice praises him for an act he performed out of hunger

The achievement they celebrate was an accident of appetite, and the story lets that sit without comment.

Sympathetic but unsentimental — it shows his fear without excusing or praising him

We are inside his fear and his hunger the whole time, yet the writer never claims for him a courage he did not show.

The seagull would have eaten and stayed exactly where he was

Feeding him would have removed the only force capable of moving him, which is precisely why the halt is the turning point of the story.

It sets his plaintive begging against his mother's derision at the crucial moment

Two cries, two attitudes: a starving child asking and a parent refusing, which is the pressure the whole episode depends on.

Their pressure was a method with a purpose, and they praised and fed him the moment he flew

The reversal at the end — screaming praise and offering dog-fish — shows that the starving and the mockery were pressure rather than punishment.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the failure of scolding and threats; the failure of taunting, with the pretended sleep; hunger as the actual trigger, with the withheld fish; the absence of any decision at the moment of flight; the involuntary spreading of the wings; a counter-argument fro…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should identify the methods and their outcomes: demonstration, with the flying lessons and the herring; scolding and the threat of starvation; taunting from the plateau and his pretended sleep; temptation with the withheld fish, and why it worked; a concluding judgement ab…

Switching over to his second and last fuel tank

The story plants the fuel shortage long before it matters, so that the five or ten minutes left at the end is a consequence rather than a coincidence.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

The story does not need to condemn him; it simply reports his own better judgement and the trivial desires that overruled it.

It reduces a competent pilot to a helpless passenger before help arrives

Compass, instruments, radio, sight — each loss strips away part of his competence, so that the stranger's arrival has something to be measured against.

That he had given up all control to someone he could not identify

The man who risked everything rather than turn back is now following orders gratefully — a reversal the phrase quietly admits.

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Both are true, but being on duty is not what makes her evidence hard to dismiss.

That the narrator invented the story afterwards to explain his safe landing

The narration is his own honest account, written as memory rather than as a claim; the other three explanations are all left open.

An outside witness turns a private experience into something the reader must take seriously

If only the pilot had spoken, the reader could set the whole thing down to his nerves. The radar makes the mystery public.

We are limited to what he knew at each moment, so his confusion becomes ours

A first-person account cannot see beyond itself, which is exactly why the ending can pose questions instead of answering them.

He moves from confidence to recklessness, then to helplessness, relief and finally bewilderment

Tracking those five stages is the most reliable way to answer any question about his experience in the storm.

The mystery, and with it the question the story exists to ask

A named pilot shaking his hand would turn an unexplained rescue into an ordinary act of airmanship.

She said only that no other aeroplanes were flying and that his was the only one on the radar

The shortage of fuel belongs to the narrator's own Dakota. Attaching it to her statement invents evidence the story does not give.

A correct judgement can be overruled by a small personal want, with serious consequences

He gets the analysis exactly right — he cannot climb over, cannot go round, ought to return — and then flies into the storm for breakfast.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the storm as a foreseeable obstacle correctly assessed; his recognition that he cannot climb over or go round for want of fuel; his own conclusion that he ought to return to Paris; the trivial motives that overrule it; the consequences that follow from the…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the loss of compass, instruments and radio before the stranger appears; the aeroplane described by absences — no lights, no radio call, no name; the practical reality of the help given; the disappearance the instant the runway is sighted; the woman's radar…

Because it is told in the first person, so the narrator can only report what he himself knew

A narrator limited to his own knowledge can honestly end in ignorance; an outside narrator would have had to say, and the mystery would collapse.

That the sister's wings were far shorter than the young seagull's

The bird could not measure another bird's wings against his own; only a watching narrator can give us the fact that convicts him of fear.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

At each decisive moment the character is driven or led rather than brave, which is why the pair reads as a study of fear and help.

Both treat something they can pass through as if it were solid

He drops his legs to stand on water; the pilot assumes mountains of cloud cannot be crossed except by flying straight through.

That help in these stories is a means to an end rather than a relationship

The mother rejoins the family in the air and the black aeroplane is gone from the sky; in each case the helper's work ends the moment it succeeds.

The central figure brought his danger on himself

The other three are true of both. Only the pilot creates his own emergency, by rejecting a decision he had reached correctly.

It suggests that the pattern of fear and help is not peculiar to human beings

A bird on a ledge and a pilot in a storm share a shape of experience, and the pairing is what makes that shape visible.

Each leaves the central figure safe on a surface he had not expected to reach

The seagull floats on a sea he had tried to stand on; the pilot stands on a runway he could not have found — and the seagull is not alone at the end.

A is false, but R is true

She stops with the fish just out of reach, so the assertion is false. The reason describes what she actually does.

By reporting the bird's fear and hunger exactly and refusing to praise him at the end

The flat closing line, after so much detail about the bird's misery, is the clearest sign that the writer is observing rather than celebrating.

The narrator would have had to say who the stranger was, and the mystery would collapse

An outside narrator knows more than any character, so the story's central silence would become an evasion rather than an honest limit.

The seagull never understands his mother's tactic; the pilot recognises at once that the stranger is helping

The seagull waits in surprise, wondering why she does not come nearer; the pilot thinks straight away that this man knows he is lost.

A pattern: unable to begin or to continue alone, led by another, and calm only afterwards

Setting, character and outcome all differ; the shared element is the shape of the experience, which is what a comparison answer should identify.

In both stories another creature makes the difference — a mother's withheld fish and a stranger's guidance

Neither figure gets through his difficulty unaided, which is precisely the pattern that emerges when the two are read together.

The reader meets a fully explained rescue first, which sharpens the sense that something is missing from the second

Order matters: having watched a helper's plan work in full view, the reader feels the absence of any explanation in the second all the more.

It is usually recognised afterwards — a withheld fish looks like cruelty, and an unlit aeroplane stays a mystery

The seagull waits in surprise, wondering why his mother will not come nearer, and the pilot never learns who led him out; in both, the meaning of the help arrives late or not at all.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the mother's method of withholding, with the fish held almost within reach and the derisive cry; the effect, the dive that becomes flight, and the appearance of cruelty at the time; the stranger's method of leading, with the wave and the turn to the north;…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: third-person narration in the first story and the outside knowledge it allows, illustrated by the sister's wings; the unsentimental effect and the flat closing line; first-person narration in the second story and the confinement to the pilot's knowledge; ho…