Read the brief introduction to the book's plot and complete the following sentences.
1 It was difficult for Ben to find a flying job because...
2 The job that the television company offered him was very good because...
3 The company paid good money for...
4 Ben wasn’t able to fly the plane back because...
The Last Inch
(by James Aldridge, adapted)
It wasn't easy for Ben, a pilot of forty-three, to find a flying job. That’s why it
was a stroke of luck when he was offered a job by the Commercial Television
Stock Company. They paid a thousand dollars for every' five hundred feet of shark
film. Ben used a light plane to get to a little desert island in the Red Sea where the
water along the coast was always filled with good-sized sharks.
Ben took his ten-year-old son Davy with him. He was a shy quiet boy who had
never been particularly loved by his parents.
While filming the sharks, Ben was attacked by a huge tiger shark. He was lucky
to get out of the water, but his body was a bleeding mess. He couldn't feel his
arms or his feet. He had lost a lot of blood and was in and out of consciousness.
The boy had to either fly the plane or die from thirst and the hot sun on the island
where nobody would ever find them.
Only once had, Ben shown the boy how to fly a plane. He also explained that it
was the last inch above the ground that mattered if the plane was going to crash
while landing or not.
