CSSE 2002 English Paper
Click on “MATERIALS” above to see the comprehension text.
The passage is from “Far From The Madding Crowd” by Thomas Hardy.
To the left of each line you will see the lines have been numbered.
This will help you when answering the questions.
Spend about 8 minutes reading the text.
You will have 40 minutes to complete the test.
The following passage is from Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It is set in the countryside in the south of England, in the 19th century. Gabriel Oak is walking in the country one evening intending to seek work in the next village, when he comes across a fire in a rick-yard. A ‘rick’ or ‘stack’ is a large block of stored wheat, grain or hay. A ‘rick’ would have a pointed thatched roof to protect the harvest from rain. Ricks where built in a special ‘rick-yard’ near to each farm.
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He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand an unusual light—
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appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow increased.
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Something was on fire.
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Gabriel again mounted the gate and, leaping down on the other side upon what he
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found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the exact direction of the fire. The
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blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by his approach and its own increase, showed him as
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he drew nearer the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. A rick-yard
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was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to be painted over with a rich
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orange glow, and the whole front of his smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a
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dancing shadow pattern of thorn-twigs—the light reaching him through a leafless
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intervening hedge—and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright in the
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same abounding rays. He came up to the boundary fence, and stood to regain breath. It
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seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living soul.
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The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone as to preclude a
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possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently from a house. As the wind blows the fire
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inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline
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is lost to the eye. However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together, will resist combustion
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for a length of time, if it begins on the outside.
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This before Gabriel’s eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together, and the flames
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darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on the windward side, rising and falling
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in intensity, like the coal of a cigar. Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a
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whisking noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no
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crackle. Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds, and behind
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these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a
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lustrous yellow uniformity. Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a
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creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone
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imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms,
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from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest.
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Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more
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serious than he had at first imagined. A scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him
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a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of
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others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead of the straw-stack
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standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a regular connection
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between it and the remaining stacks of the group.
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Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. The first man he came to
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was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts were several yards in advance of
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his body, which they could never drag on fast enough. Other figures now appeared
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behind this shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from being
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alone he was in a great company—whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed
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by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by their owners’ movements. The assemblage
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set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose.
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“Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!” cried Gabriel to those nearest to him. The
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wheat stood on stone supports, and between these, tongues of yellow hue from the
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burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the fire once got under this stack, all would
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be lost.
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“Get a tarpaulin—quick!” said Gabriel.
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One was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. The flames
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immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the wheat-rick, and stood up vertical.
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“Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the tarpaulin wet.” said Gabriel again.
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The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering
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the wheat-rick.
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Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, and digging in his feet, and occasionally
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sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up. He at once sat astride the very
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apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged
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thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and some water.
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Billy Smallbury by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding
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on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble
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fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak’s face and sprinkled him
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generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his
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crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.