Peter Burnett

 

 

 

Welcome to the website of author

Peter Burnett

 

 

http://leamingtonbooks.com

My favourite passage from Robert Louis Stevenson's writing is a day in the life of one who believes himself castaway on Erraid.

A sea-bred boy would not have stayed a day on Earraid; which is only what they call a tidal islet, and except in the bottom of the neaps, can be entered and left twice in every twenty-four hours, either dry-shod, or at the most by wading. Even I, who had the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish—even I (I say) if I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. It was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. The wonder was rather that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to come back. I had starved with cold and hunger on that island for close upon one hundred hours. But for the fishers, I might have left my bones there, in pure folly. And even as it was, I had paid for it pretty dear, not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat.

 

This article is headed with this tremendous image: "'It is a very fine lass,' he said at last" Chapter XXVI 'End of the Flight: We Pass the Forth', a Scan from Kidnapped, 1886, London: Cassell and Company.  File Location.