"Jonathan Livingston Seagull " Part 3 Chapter 3

The squawks and grockles of everyday life in the Flock were cut off as though the

formation were a giant knife, and eight thousand gull-eyes watched, without a

single blink. One by one, each of the eight birds pulled sharply upward into a full

loop and flew all the way around to a dead-slow stand-up landing on the sand.

Then as though this sort of thing happened every day, Jonathan Seagull began his

critique of the flight.

"To begin with," he said with a wry smile, "you were all a bit late on the join-up..."

It went like lightning through the Flock. Those birds are Outcast! And they have

returned! And that... that can't happen! Fletcher's predictions of battle melted in the

Flock's confusion.

"Well sure, O.K. they're Outcast," said some of the younger gulls, "but hey, man,

where did they learn to fly like that?"

It took almost an hour for the Word of the Elder to pass through the Flock: Ignore

them. The gull who speaks to an Outcast is himself Outcast. The gull who looks

upon an Outcast breaks the Law of the Flock, Gray-feathered backs were turned

upon Jonathan from that moment onward, but he didn't appear to notice. He held

his practice sessions directly over the Council Beach and for the first time began

pressing his students to the limit of their ability.

"Martin Gull!" he shouted across the sky. "You say you know low-speed flying. You

know nothing till you prove it! FLY!"

So quiet little Martin William Seagull, startled to be caught under his instructor's

fire, surprised himself and became a wizard of low speeds. In the lightest breeze he

could curve his feathers to lift himself without a single flap of wing from sand to

cloud and down again.

Likewise Charles-Roland Gull flew the Great Mountain Wind to twenty-four

thousand feet, came down blue from the cold thin air, amazed and happy,

determined to go still higher tomorrow.

Fletcher Seagull, who loved aerobatics like no one else, conquered his sixteen point

vertical slow roll and the next day topped it off with a triple cartwheel, his feathers

flashing white sunlight to a beach from which more than one furtive eye watched.

Every hour Jonathan was there at the side of each of his students, demonstrating,

suggesting, pressuring, guiding. He flew with them through night and cloud and

storm, for the sport of it, while the Flock huddled miserably on the ground.

When the flying was done, the students relaxed in the sand, and in time they

listened more closely to Jonathan. He had some crazy ideas that they couldn't

understand, but then he had some good ones that they could.

Gradually, in the night, another circle formed around the circle of students a circle

of curious gulls listening in the darkness for hours on end, not wishing to see or be

seen of one another, fading away before daybreak.

the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same terrible uncontrolled disaster,

and at ninety miles per hour it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in

midair and smashed down into a brick hard sea.

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