He walked over to the main road he had been flying over so recently and thumbed himself a ride to Kelly Field. He said he had seen the ship turn around and start back looking for him.
The pilot who had been flying the ship never knew if the other one had really fallen out of the ship, or if he had jumped out as a joke.
[BONNY’S DREAM]
Bonny had a dream. His inventor’s eyes gleamed with the light of it. His days lived with the hope of it. His nights moved with its vision.
Because of his dream we called him Bonny Gull. He dreamed of building an airplane with metal, wood and fabric to emulate the sinewed, feathered grace of a soaring gull.
He studied gulls. He studied them dead and alive. He studied their wonderful soaring flight alive. He killed them and studied their lifeless wings. He wanted their secret. He wanted to recreate it for man.
He might have asked God. He might have asked God and heard a still small voice answer: “Render unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s and unto God what is God’s. Render unto man his own flight and leave to the gulls their own. Man’s flight is different because his destiny is different. He doesn’t need the gulls’ flight.”
But Bonny envied the gulls. He killed hundreds of them, yes, thousands, and buried them in the field. He built an airplane from what he thought he had learned from their dead bodies.
He built an airplane and took it out to fly. Engineers, who had never studied gulls but who had studied man’s flight, told him he shouldn’t do it. They pointed out to him how the center of pressure would shift on his wings. But Bonny glared his glittering faith at them, snuggled his dream in close, and flew.