Wild Adventures

Year 7 English Anthology 1

This is an extract from the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1899. The narrator is describing the experience of going up the River Congo in Africa, in a steamboat.

Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of the sunshine. The long stretches of the river ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks, hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side.

The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had once known. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder in the midst of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace.

On we went into the silence, along empty stretches, round the still bends, between the high walls of our winding way, the heavy beat of the stern-wheel* echoing in hollow claps. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty building. It made you feel very small, very lost.

We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night, sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. We were wanderers on prehistoric earth, on an earth that seemed like an unknown planet.

*stern-wheel – the big wheel at the back of the boat which turns and pushes it through the water.

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In this opening of a short story, Gregor, a young man in his early twenties, wakes up to face an extraordinary situation: he has changed into a gigantic beetle.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed, in his bed, into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his armour-plated back, and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff, arched segments. The bed quilt was about to slide off his rounded belly completely.

“His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin, waved helplessly before his eyes. What has happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room, an ordinary bedroom, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a magazine and put into a frame.

Gregor’s eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky made him feel quite melancholy. “What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense?” he thought. But it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced himself towards his right side, he always rolled onto his back again.

He looked at his alarm clock ticking on the chest. Heavens! he thought. It was after half past six and the hands were quietly moving on. Had the alarm clock gone off? Of course it must have gone off. But usually it was impossible to sleep quietly through that ear-splitting noise…

As this was running through his mind, there came a cautious tap at the door. ‘Gregor,’ said his mother’s voice, ‘it’s nearly quarter to seven. Haven’t you a train to catch?’ Gregor really wanted to explain everything, but he just said: ‘Yes, yes, I’m nearly ready.’ He had a shock as he heard his voice answering hers. It was unmistakably his own voice, but with a persistent, horrible, twittering squeak behind it like an undertone.

He had to get out of bed. To get rid of the quilt was quite easy; he only had to inflate himself a little and the quilt fell off by itself. But the next move was difficult, especially because he was so broad. He needed arms and hands to hoist himself up; instead he had only the numerous little legs which never stopped waving in all directions. Gregor thought that he might get out of bed with the lower part of his body first. But this lower part proved too difficult to move. When finally, almost wild with annoyance, he gathered his forces together and thrust out recklessly, he bumped heavily against the end of the bed. So he tried to get the top part of himself out first, but when he got his head over the edge of the bed, he felt too scared to go further. He knew that if he let himself fall in this way he would injure his head.

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And he must not lose consciousness now. It would be better to stay in bed. But then, after a repetition of the same efforts, he lay in the same position, sighing deeply and watching all his little legs struggling against each other more wildly than ever. He told himself it was impossible to stay in bed. He had to risk everything for the smallest hope of getting out of it.

So he said to himself: ‘Before it strikes a quarter past seven I must be out of this bed, without fail.’ And he set himself to rocking his whole body in a regular rhythm, with the idea of swinging it out of bed. This way, he could keep his head from injury by lifting it when he fell. His back seemed to be hard and was not likely to suffer from a fall on the carpet. His biggest worry was the loud crash he would make, which would probably cause anxiety, if not terror, to his family. Still, he must take the risk.

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In this extract from Jaws, Peter Benchley describes the arrival of a huge shark.

In thirty-five feet of water, the great fish swam slowly, its tail waving just enough to maintain motion. It saw nothing, for the water was murky with motes of vegetation. The fish had been moving parallel to the shoreline. Now it turned, banking slightly, and followed the bottom gradually upward. The fish perceived more light in the water, but still it saw nothing.

The boy was resting, his arms dangling down, his feet and ankles dipping in and out of the water with each small swell. His head was turned towards shore, and he noticed that he had been carried out beyond what his mother would consider safe. He could see her lying on her towel, and the man and child playing in the wavewash. He was not afraid, for the water was calm and he wasn’t really very far from shore – only forty yards or so. But he wanted to get closer; otherwise his mother might sit up, spy him, and order him out of the water. He eased himself back a little bit so he could use his feet to help propel himself. He began to kick and paddle towards shore. His arms displaced water almost silently, but his kicking feet made erratic splashes and left swirls of bubbles in his wake.

The fish did not hear the sound, but rather registered the sharp and jerky impulses emitted by the kicks. They were signals, faint but true, and the fish locked on them, homing. It rose, slowly at first, then gaining speed as the signals grew stronger.

The boy stopped for a moment to rest. The signals ceased. The fish slowed, turning its head from side to side, trying to recover them. The boy lay perfectly still, and the fish passed beneath him, skimming the sandy bottom. Again it turned.

The boy resumed paddling. He kicked only every third or fourth stroke; kicking was more exertion than steady paddling. But the occasional kicks sent new signals to the fish. This time it needed to lock on them only an instant, for it was almost directly below the boy. The fish rose. Nearly vertical, it now saw the commotion on the surface.

The boy’s last – only – thought was that he had been punched in the stomach. The breath was driven from him in a sudden rush. He had no time to cry out, nor, had he had the time, would he have known what to cry, for he could not see the fish. The fish’s head drove the raft out of the water. The jaws smashed together, engulfing head, arms, shoulders, trunk, pelvis and most of the raft. Nearly half the fish had come clear of the water, and it slid forward and down in a belly flopping motion, grinding the mass of flesh and bone and rubber. The boy’s legs were severed at the hip, and they sank, spinning slowly to the bottom.

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This is an extract from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In this section of the novel, the narrator tells us about his first meeting with Blind Pew.

So things passed until, the day after the funeral, and about three o’clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure. He stopped a little from the inn, and raising his voice in an odd sing-song, addressed the air in front of him, “Will any kind friend inform a poor blind man, who has lost the precious sight of his eyes in the gracious defence of his native country, England—and God bless King George!—where or in what part of this country he may now be?”

“You are at the Admiral Benbow, Black Hill Cove, my good man,” said I.

“I hear a voice,” said he, “a young voice. Will you give me your hand, my kind young friend, and lead me in?”

I held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature gripped it in a moment like a vise. I was so much startled that I struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close up to him with a single action of his arm.

“Now, boy,” he said, “take me in to the captain.”

“Sir,” said I, “upon my word I dare not.”

“Oh,” he sneered, “that’s it! Take me in straight or I’ll break your arm.”

And he gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that made me cry out.

“Sir,” said I, “it is for yourself I mean. The captain is not what he used to be. He sits with a drawn cutlass. Another gentleman—”

“Come, now, march,” interrupted he; and I never heard a voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man’s. It cowed me more than the pain, and I began to obey him at once, walking straight in at the door and towards the parlour, where our sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed with rum. The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry. “Lead me straight up to him, and when I’m in view, cry out, ‘Here’s a friend for you, Bill.’ If you don’t, I’ll do this,” and with that he gave me a twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I was so utterly terrified of the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of the captain,

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and as I opened the parlour door, cried out the words he had ordered in a trembling voice.

The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of him and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not so much of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but I do not believe he had enough force left in his body.

“Now, Bill, sit where you are,” said the beggar. “If I can’t see, I can hear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand. Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right.”

We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from the hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain’s, which closed upon it instantly.

“And now that’s done,” said the blind man; and at the words he suddenly left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as I still stood motionless, I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance.

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The following extract is the opening of the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding. A group of boys have crash landed on an island. Ralph and Piggy, two of the boys, realise that they could be all alone.

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon. Though he had taken off his school sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.

"Hi!" it said. "Wait a minute!"

The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of raindrops fell pattering.

"Wait a minute," the voice said. "I got caught up."

The fair boy stopped and jerked his stockings with an automatic gesture that made the jungle seem for a moment like the Home Counties.

The voice spoke again…

"I can't hardly move with all these creeper things."

The owner of the voice came backing out of the undergrowth so that twigs scratched on a greasy wind-breaker. The naked crooks of his knees were plump, caught and scratched by thorns. He bent down, removed the thorns carefully, and turned around. He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat. He came forward, searching out safe lodgments for his feet, and then looked up through thick spectacles.

"Where's the man with the megaphone?"

The fair boy shook his head.

"This is an island. At least I think it's an island. That's a reef out in the sea. Perhaps there aren't any grownups anywhere."

The fat boy looked startled.

"There was that pilot. But he wasn't in the passenger cabin, he was up in front."

The fair boy was peering at the reef through screwed-up eyes.

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"All them other kids," the fat boy went on. "Some of them must have got out. They must have, mustn't they?"

The fair boy began to pick his way as casually as possible toward the water. He tried to be offhand and not too obviously uninterested, but the fat boy hurried after him.

"Aren't there any grownups at all?"

"I don't think so."

The fair boy said this solemnly; but then the delight of a realized ambition overcame him. In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and grinned at the reversed fat boy.

"No grownups!"

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In this section from Celia Rees’ novel, Witch Child, Mary has set sail for America with the Puritans – a religious group looking to set up a new society in the 16th Century.

I have seen my first Great Wonder. I was up on deck with Jonah. I spend as much time there as I can. Life below decks is becoming impossible. In the confined space, jealousies, rivalries, even hatreds sprout and blossom with strange speed, like plants in a hot house. Quarrels can break out over anything. I have earned scowls and sneers for I know not what from girls I don't even know.

Our captain allows us up on deck as long as the weather permits and we do not interfere with the work of the ship. We are lucky, some of the sailors say. Some masters keep the passengers battened below for the entire voyage, like slaves out of Africa. I give thanks each time I leave the crowded darkness of the great cabin with its stench of vomit and slops, rancid cooking, wet wool and unwashed bodies. I am glad to get out of the din of babies squalling, children crying, voices raised in bickering and quarrelling, all this against the constant thud and swish of the waves against the hull.

Jonah and I were watching the porpoises that swim and dive next to the ship. They are not the Great Wonder. They have accompanied us for many days and are no longer anything much to remark about. No, the thing I saw was of the air, not the sea. A huge bird drifting above us in lazy circles on scarcely moving wings, weaving in and out of the sun, seeming to appear and disappear as if by magic. The sailors pointed, open-mouth, and I stared until my eyes ached. It was a bird of the southern ocean, the sailors said, hardly ever seen in these latitudes at all.

Jonah asked to know more. He is a great collector of information on many different subjects. It had been likely blown off course, they said, probably buy some great storm. The sailors are very superstitious, looking for signs in everything. There was much debate amongst them as to whether this was a good or ill omen. They were agreed on one thing. When Nathaniel Vale got his fowling piece and took a shot at the great bird, thinking to bring it down for fresh meat, it was as if he had aimed a shot at the captain. The sailors leapt forward and took the weapon from him. They looked up, full of fear. To harm such a bird would bring very bad luck indeed.

The bird appeared untouched, the shot going wide, but it left us, wheeling in one last great arc and flying away across the trackless wastes of the great ocean. A feather drifted down. One of the great wing feathers: pure white, tipped with black. It caught in the rigging just above my head.

I snatched it before anyone else could. It will make an excellent quill, it's better than the one I have already for writing this, my Journal. I have

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stripped the filaments from the end of the shocked and fashioned a nib. I have found a quiet place for writing. It is dry, sheltered from wind and spray, used for storing spare ropes and sails and such and little frequented.

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