quotes_jul27_2003.htm

‘…a great dog-wolf jumped out behind us, and away our rested hounds tore after him, with us at their tails. He ran straight as an arrow till sunset, towards the sunset. We came at last to long capes stretching into winding waters, and on a grey beach below us we saw ships drawn up…Men moved in the ships, and the sun flashed on their helmets…’

This is from “On the Great Wall” in Puck of Pook’s Hill.

Parnesius, a Centurion of the Thirtieth Legion, was stationed on the Great Wall which divided Roman territory from the wilds of the north. Out hunting, north of the wall, he comes on the long ships of the ‘Winged Hats’, Vikings from Scandinavia who were casting greedy eyes on the rich lands of Roman Britain.

‘…A fire without a flame burned in my head; an evil taste grew in my mouth; my eyelids shut hot over my eyes; my breath was hot between my teeth, and my hands were like the hands of a stranger. I was made to sing songs and to mock the trees, though I was afraid of them. At the same time I saw myself laughing, and I was very sad for this fine young man, who was myself.’…

This is from “The Knife and the Native Chalk” in Rewards and Fairies.

An ancient flint man of the Sussex downlands is telling how he went to the people of the Wealden forest to get iron knives against the Beast, the wolves who preyed on the flocks of the flint people. To the folk of the bare downs the tree country was foreign and perilous, and full of strange fevers…

…he was always learning…to follow the cod and the halibut along the under-sea banks, and wrench the rockling out of his hole among the weeds; how to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water, and dart like a rifle bullet in at one port-hole and out at another as the fishes ran…to take the shoulder piece out of a cod at full speed ten fathoms deep; and never to stop to look at a boat or ship…

This is from “The White Seal” in The Jungle Book.

It describes the upbringing of Kotick, the White Seal, who when he has come to his full strength leads his people off to a distant sanctuary where they are safe from their greatest enemy, Man.