Meanwhile my parents had also seen what happen and it was finished immediately. After three jumps we came to the conclusion that the canvas was not very slow down the fall. It took some courage to jump, but you have to sacrifice for science. Then while balancing on the fairly broad beam the canvas was unfolded and as a kind of parachute held above our heads as we jumped in turns from about nine feet hight with this parachute down to test whether it indeed decelerate the landing. View at “Our Place”, the swing and my Dad We had a strange piece of folded canvas tied to our bodies that we conveyed at the top. Along my rope, twisted around the upper cross beam, we climbed with difficulty on top. “Mom and Dad say you must come home” ,was the message her brother proclaimed.Īlso on “Our Place” there were a swing structure, consisting of a reddish-brown painted inverted U-shape of massive wooden beams firmly anchored into the ground, where the swing hung at two large steel wire eyes, all built by the father of summer house No. She had to sleep with her parents in the summer house.

If she was jealous of us, I do not know, maybe not. But to sleep in the tent was not allowed, yet. Mardy, the younger sister of Erik, often joined our adventures.

Because, “It’s too dangerous to keep a hurricane lantern inside a tent, it must remain outside!”. And outside the tent the hurricane lantern from my father was burning. And sometimes sleep a night in a borrowed small tent from his older brother, together with Erik, whose parents had also a summer house. Great for building huts, digging tunnels and adventures with campfire with other children. But then the question was what to do with a rope in The Netherlands, all flat, no rocks or mountains to climb. A good strong woven rope from about 1 inch diameter and 20 feet long. I was probably one of a few boys who asked a “long and strong rope” for his eleventh birthday, what I got from my parents. High up to the ceiling in the gym and back down. At school, during gym class, I applied myself to the ropes to be able to climb rope as good as possible. And climb along a rope further into the well and back up again to the daglicht. The part of the book in which Dick climb along a rusty ladder into the well on Kirrin Island, and managed to pass a large stone what was fallen into the well and stuck at some depth. I myself should have been at that time between ten and eleven years old.

It must have been about twenty-two years after the first publication in the Netherlands, that I read the first book and explicitly identified myself with Dick Kirrin, the younger brother of Julian, who was then eleven years old in the book. “Five on a Treasure Island” – translation published 1943 in NL

Five go to kirrin island