Read the paragraphs below and answer the questions.
I had never seen a sky so wide. It pressed down on every side, vast and pale and empty, until the land beneath it seemed no more than a thin grey line scratched between sky and sea. The pony pulled the little cart along at a steady walk, and for a long time there was nothing at all: no farm, no cottage, no fence, no living soul. There was only the flat, desolate marsh, stretching away on every hand, and the cold breath of the wind upon my face.
1. This passage is written in the:
2. How is the narrator travelling?
3. In the first paragraph, the marsh is mainly described as:
Then the road ran out. Ahead of us a narrow causeway crossed the water, straight and low, and I understood at once that when the tide came in it would vanish completely beneath the sea. On either side the water gleamed like beaten tin, hard and grey and cold. The reeds stood up in pale, bleached clumps, and as the wind moved through them they made a soft, seething, hissing sound that never quite stopped.
4. What does the narrator realise about the causeway?
5. The phrase “the water gleamed like beaten tin” is an example of:
6. The reeds make “a soft, seething, hissing sound”. The repeated soft ‘s’ sounds (sibilance) are used mainly to:
And there, at the far end of the causeway, the house was waiting. It rose straight out of the marsh, tall and gaunt, built of grey stone that had been beaten smooth by a hundred years of salt and rain. Its windows were dark and narrow, and they seemed to watch me as the cart drew slowly nearer. It was the loneliest, most forbidding house I had ever seen — and yet, somehow, I could not look away from it.
7. “they seemed to watch me” describes the windows of the house. This is an example of:
8. The house is described as ‘gaunt’. This makes it sound:
9. Which group of words best creates the passage’s sense of foreboding (a feeling that something bad may happen)?
10. By the end of the passage, the narrator’s feelings towards the house are best described as: