| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: time--that is to say, at low tide, when the rising floods did not reach it
--it was sweet. This important point established, Herbert looked for some
cavity which would serve them as a retreat, but in vain; everywhere the
wall appeared smooth, plain, and perpendicular.
However, at the mouth of the watercourse and above the reach of the high
tide, the convulsions of nature had formed, not a grotto, but a pile of
enormous rocks, such as are often met with in granite countries and which
bear the name of "Chimneys."
Pencroft and Herbert penetrated quite far in among the rocks, by sandy
passages in which light was not wanting, for it entered through the
openings which were left between the blocks, of which some were only
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: Bonacieux could not close his eyes; not because his dungeon was
so very disagreeable, but because his uneasiness was so great.
He sat all night on his stool, starting at the least noise; and
when the first rays of the sun penetrated into his chamber, the
dawn itself appeared to him to have taken funereal tints.
All at once he heard his bolts drawn, and made a terrified bound.
He believed they were come to conduct him to the scaffold; so
that when he saw merely and simply, instead of the executioner he
expected, only his commissary of the preceding evening, attended
by his clerk, he was ready to embrace them both.
"Your affair has become more complicated since yesterday evening,
The Three Musketeers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: there was no time to carry him down with infinite pre-
cautions and wait to see how he got on. Those below
would pick him up at the bottom of the stairs all right.
We were in a hurry to go back to the pumps. That busi-
ness could not wait. A bad leak is an inhuman thing.
"One would think that the sole purpose of that fiend-
ish gale had been to make a lunatic of that poor devil of
a mulatto. It eased before morning, and next day the
sky cleared, and as the sea went down the leak took up.
When it came to bending a fresh set of sails the crew
demanded to put back--and really there was nothing else
Youth |
