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The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more about speed than the fastest
gull alive. From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as
hard as he could, he pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why
seagulls don't make blazing steep power-dives. In just six seconds he was moving seventy
miles per hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstable on the upstroke.
Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very peak of his ability,
he lost control at high speed. Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight
ahead first, then push over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left
wing stalled on an upstroke, he'd roll violently left, stall his right wing recovering, and
flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right.
He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried, but all ten times, as
he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst into a churning mass of feathers,
out of control, crashing down into the water. They key, he thought as last, dripping wet,
must be to hold the wings still at high speeds - to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings
still. From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling
into his dive, beak straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty
miles per hour. It took tremendous strength,but it worked.In ten seconds he has blurred through
ninty miles per hour.Jonathan had set a world speedrecord for seagulls.
But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the instant he changed
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.