The Lonely Sea and the Sky Read Online Free

take effect. I think that was the worst of the whole affair. I saw my father, who had harnessed the buggy and followed me, standing by my bed. There was a very sharp pain, presumably as they started slicing open my finger, and then I passed out.
    Â Â I heard afterwards that they had sent my father back to fetch the snake, so that they could use some of the poison as an antidote, but then decided not to do so, and waited until some stuff came down from London on a train. This arrived in the evening, and it rippled round inside me as they squirted syringefuls of it into the skin of my stomach. Afterwards, my father told me that they did not know until next morning if I was going to survive.
    Â Â This was my first experience of publicity. The adventure was reported in the local paper, and I seemed to have a stream of visitors in the hospital. They included Nancy Platt and my cousin Margaret, whom I adored.
    Â Â I do not know if I was born with a passion for spending all day alone in the wildest parts of the countryside. I suspect it was due to circumstances, such as the start of my school life. When I was seven I was sent off to school at Ellerslie, about 7 miles away. My parents used to drive me there in the family buggy. During my first term, the senior boys of the school were having a game, which was to prevent some of them from entering the building. I was standing on the concrete floor of the washplace at the time, with a row of basins round two sides of the room, and above the basins a row of oblong windows, hinged at the top, which pushed outwards. Through one of these windows appeared the head and shoulders of my brother, trying to get into the building. I picked up a handful of sawdust from a box on the floor and threw it in his face. It was a silly, thoughtless thing to do, but certainly not done from malice, only excitement. A bit of this sawdust went into his eye, and I can remember his bending over the basin and bathing it.
    Â Â As a result of this I was 'put in Coventry' for three weeks, and for the whole of that time not a single boy in the school spoke to me. My brother, who was four and a half years older than me, was one of the senior boys. I do not know if he had any part in the 'Coventry' punishment, but he never spoke to me during the period of it. It seems hard to believe that senior boys would do such a thing to a seven-year-old new boy, just because of a stupid joke that went wrong. I can assume only that I must have been very objectionable, perhaps precocious; I don't know.
    Â Â This episode turned me into a rebel against my fellows; every boy was an enemy unless he proved himself to be a friend. I seemed to have to fight for everything, and the school appeared as tough as a prison. To make matters worse, I was often in trouble with the headmaster. My first term I was up for a beating seven times. The headmaster, who was a big, powerful man, sent one up to one's dormitory at a fixed time. Here, one waited beside one's bed. Being kept waiting was the worst part, and I couldn't stop myself from trembling. He made us strip off our trousers, and beat us on the bare bottom. But not always. Sometimes he made us strip off and bend over, and then didn't beat us. Outside the windows of that dormitory there were creeping plants like Cape gooseberries with bobble-shaped fruit dangling in the wind. Waiting there, I used to see the sparrows flitting amongst this creeper, and this stayed in my memory as a picture of misery. After a year or so my parents took me away from this school; but not because of the tough conditions, only because I was always ill there, which was a nuisance.
    Â Â I made no friends at that school, and I had none at home. I had two sisters, but the older, Barbara, was five years younger than me, and we hadn't much in common in the way of adventure. I gradually drifted into the habit of setting off on my own into an escape world of excitement and adventure.
    Â Â By the