My First Aeroplane by H. G. Wells. Short summary

5 seconds

The young storyteller wanted to fly so badly that the high price didn’t stop him. The flight on the «Great Lark» was unforgettable neither for him nor for all the villagers.

1 minute

In the early days of aeronautics, the first pilots encountered all kinds of difficulties — often tragic ones. But a comical thing happened to the narrator.

He had dreamed of flying since he was a child. At the age of 24 he bought an airplane «Big Lark». The parts of the flying machine were delivered and unloaded in a meadow near his home. The airplane cost a fortune. To keep it safe, the author hired a watchman.

And then the day X came. Almost all the villagers gathered in the meadow. The narrator sat at the steering wheel and easily lifted the plane into the air. But the watchman, so that the car was not taken away, tied it like a goat with two stakes embedded on ropes.

The force of the engine pulled these iron pins out of the ground, but they went over the heads of onlookers, then beat the windows and roofs of houses in the village.

Landing, the narrator was forced to pass a herd of pigs. To escape the wrath of the peasants, the pilot sought refuge at the police station.