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MCAS QUESTION OF THE DAY:
line
GRADE 8
2008, SESSION TWO, READING SELECTION #1.0

The narrator of this tale has just been shipwrecked on a deserted island in Scotland. The island is near the
Isle of Iona and an area called the Ross. Read the excerpt and answer the questions that follow.


from Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson

. . .

1        The time I spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me, that I must
pass it lightly over. In all the books I have read of people cast away, they had either
their pockets full of tools, or a chest of things would be thrown upon the beach
along with them, as if on purpose. My case was very different. I had nothing in my
pockets but money and Alan's silver button; and being inland bred, I was as much
short of knowledge as of means.

2        I knew indeed that shell-fish were counted good to eat; and among the rocks of
the isle I found a great plenty of limpets, which at first I could scarcely strike from
their places, not knowing quickness to be needful. There were, besides, some of the
little shells that we call buckies; I think periwinkle is the English name. Of these
two I made my whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as I found them; and so
hungry was I, that at first they seemed to me delicious.

3        Perhaps they were out of season, or perhaps there was something wrong in the
sea about my island. But at least I had no sooner eaten my first meal than I was
seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long time no better than dead. A
second trial of the same food (indeed I had no other) did better with me, and revived
my strength. But as long as I was on the island, I never knew what to expect when
I had eaten; sometimes all was well, and sometimes I was thrown into a miserable
sickness; nor could I ever distinguish what particular fish it was that hurt me.

4        All day it streamed rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be
found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of
roof, my feet were in a bog.

5        The second day I crossed the island to all sides. There was no one part of it
better than another; it was all desolate and rocky; nothing living on it but game
birds which I lacked the means to kill, and the gulls which haunted the outlying
rocks in a prodigious number. But the creek, or strait, that cut off the isle from the
main-land of the Ross, opened out on the north into a bay, and the bay again opened
into the Sound of Iona; and it was the neighbourhood of this place that I chose to
be my home; though if I had thought upon the very name of home in such a spot,
I must have burst out weeping.

6        . . . I had become in no way used to the horrid solitude of the isle, but still
looked round me on all sides (like a man that was hunted), between fear and hope
that I might see some human creature coming. Now, from a little up the hillside
over the bay, I could catch a sight of the great, ancient church and the roofs of the
people's houses in Iona. And on the other hand, over the low country of the Ross,
I saw smoke go up, morning and evening, as if from a homestead in a hollow of
the land.

7        I used to watch this smoke, when I was wet and cold, and had my head half
turned with loneliness; and think of the fireside and the company, till my heart
burned. It was the same with the roofs of Iona. Altogether, this sight I had of men's
homes and comfortable lives, although it put a point on my own sufferings, yet it
kept hope alive, and helped me to eat my raw shell-fish (which had soon grown to
be a disgust), and saved me from the sense of horror I had whenever I was quite
alone with dead rocks, and fowls, and the rain, and the cold sea.

8        I say it kept hope alive; and indeed it seemed impossible that I should be left
to die on the shores of my own country, and within view of a church-tower and the
smoke of men's houses. But the second day passed; and though as long as the light
lasted I kept a bright look-out for boats on the Sound or men passing on the Ross,
no help came near me. It still rained, and I turned in to sleep, as wet as ever, and
with a cruel sore throat, but a little comforted, perhaps, by having said good-night
to my next neighbours, the people of Iona.

In the public domain.

2008, QUESTION 23 - Grade 8  

Read the lines from paragraph 7 in the box below.

. . . and saved me from the sense of horror I had whenever I was quite alone with dead rocks, and fowls, and the rain, and the cold sea.

What is the effect of the repetition in the lines?

 
 		 
English Language Arts - Reading and Literature 

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last updated: November 16, 2009
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