Robinson Crusoe: a footprint

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Prof.ssa Giuliani
Messaggi: 21
Iscritto il: 13/10/2019, 21:07

Robinson Crusoe: a footprint

Messaggio da Prof.ssa Giuliani » 24/04/2020, 15:35

Hello everybody!

Read this short extract and discover what happened to our friend Robinson a dozen years after he landed on the island.
...Sometimes I went out in her [my boat] to divert my self, but no more hazardous voyages would I go, nor scarce ever above stone's cast or two from the shore, I was so apprehensive of being hurried out of my knowlegde again by the currents or winds, or any other accident. But now I come to a new scene of my life.

It happened one day about noon going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand: I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked around me, I could hear nothing nor see any thing, I went up to a rising ground to look farther, I went up the shore and down the shore, but I was all one, I could see no other impression but that one, I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy(1); but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot; how it came thither(2) I knew not, nor could in the least imagine.
But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying very stump at a distance to be a man; nor is it impossible to describe how many various shapes affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange unaccountable whimsies(3) came into my thoughts by the way.
(...) I slept none that night.
(1) fancy: imagination
(2) thither: to there, over there, "là"
(3) whimsy: bizzarria

Think about that, we will discuss it together.
Have a good day,
Prof.ssa Giuliani

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