Glass Starts Fire

Excerpt from Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo

            (full story available at https://www.slideshare.net/ArsalAhmed4/kensukes-kingdom-64280180)

I noticed then a fragment of clear glass lying in the sand nearby from a bottle perhaps. It was hot to touch, too hot to handle.

            It came to me in a flash. Eddie had showed me how to do it. We’d tried it in the playground at school, hiding behind the dustbins where no one could see us. A piece of paper, a bit of glass and the sun. We had made fire! I didn’t have any paper, but leaves would do. I ran up the beach and gathered whatever I could find from under the trees: bits of cane, twigs, all sorts of leaves – paper thin, tinder dry. I made a small pile on the sand and sat down beside it. I held my piece of glass close to the leaves and angled it to the sun. I had to keep it still, quite still, and wait for the first wisp of smoke.

            …

            I sat and I sat….The sun was roasting hot, but still  nothing happened. My arm was beginning to ache, so I arranged a frame of twigs above the leaves, laid the glass across it, then crouched by it and waited. Still nothing. …

            Then I saw smoke. I smelled smoke. There was a glow in amongst my pile of leaves. I crouched down at once and blew on it gently. The glow became flames. I put a few more leaves, then a dry twig or two, then some bigger ones. I had a fire! I had a fire!