Questions 1-11 are based on the following
passage.
This passage is excerpted from Jack London, The Scarlet Plague. Originally published in 1915.
An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They
moved slowly, for the old man was very old, his movements
tremulous, and he leaned heavily upon his staff. A rude
skull-cap of goat-skin protected his head from the sun.
5 From beneath this fell a scant fringe of stained and dirty-
white hair. A visor, ingeniously made from a large leaf,
shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way
of his feet on the trail. His beard, which should have been
snow-white but which showed the same weather-wear and
10 camp-stain as his hair, fell nearly to his waist in a great
tangled mass. About his chest and shoulders hung a single,
mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs, withered
and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their
sunburn and scars and scratches betoken long years of
15 exposure to the elements.
The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his
muscles to the slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a
single garment—a ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a
hole in the middle through which he had thrust his head.
20 He could not have been more than twelve years old.
Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed
tail of a pig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow
and an arrow.
On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath
25 hanging about his neck on a thong, projected the battered
handle of a hunting knife. He was as brown as a berry, and
walked softly, with almost a catlike tread. In marked
contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes—blue, deep
blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed
30 to bore into aft about him in a way that was habitual. As
he went along he smelled things, as well, his distended,
quivering nostrils carrying to his brain an endless series of
messages from the outside world. Also, his hearing was
acute, and had been so trained that it operated
35 automatically. Without conscious effort, he heard all the
slight sounds in the apparent quiet—heard, and
differentiated, and classified these sounds—whether they
were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of
bees and gnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted
40 to him only in lulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot,
shoving a pouchful of earth into the entrance of his hole.
Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and
odor had given him a simultaneous warning. His hand went
back to the old man, touching him, and the pair stood still.
45 Ahead, at one side of the top of the embankment, arose a
crackling sound, and the boy's gaze was fixed on the tops of
the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed
into view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the
humans. He did not like them, and growled querulously.
50 Slowly the boy fitted the arrow to the bow, and slowly he
pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removed his eyes
from the bear.
The old man peered from under his green leaf at the
danger, and stood as quietly as the boy. For a few seconds
55 this mutual scrutinizing went on; then, the bear betraying
a growing irritability, the boy, with a movement of his
head, indicated that the old man must step aside from the
trail and go down the embankment. The boy followed,
going backward, still holding the bow taut and ready. They
60 waited till a crashing among the bushes from the opposite
side of the embankment told them the bear had gone on.
The boy grinned as he led back to the trail.
"A big un, Granser," he chuckled.
The old man shook his head.
65 "They get thicker every day," he complained in a thin,
undependable falsetto. "Who'd have thought I'd live to see
the time when a man would be afraid of his life on the way
to the Cliff House. When I was a boy, Edwin, men and
women and little babies used to come out here from San
70 Francisco by tens of thousands on a nice day. And there
weren't any bears then. No, sir. They used to pay money to
look at them in cages, they were that rare."
"What is money, Granser?"
Before the old man could answer, the boy recollected
75 and triumphantly shoved his hand into a pouch under his
bear-skin and pulled forth a battered and tarnished silver
dollar. The old man's eyes glistened, as he held the coin
close to them.
"I can't see," he muttered. "You look and see if you can
80 make out the date, Edwin."
The boy laughed.
"You're a great Granser," he cried delightedly, "always
making believe them little marks mean something."