Sentence No. 87 · 22 June 2026
I heaved them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room, brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God's aid, succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë — Jane Eyre (1847) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The sentence is a long chain of past-tense verbs — "heaved," "deluged," "flew," "brought," "baptized," "succeeded" — all sharing the same subject "I." When you see many verb phrases in the same tense with no new subject, they belong in one continuous list, joined by commas and a final "and."
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A late-night vigil ends in fire and rescue. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
A new sentence from a great book, every day.
Play today’s sentenceFree, no account. Or play this one — it will give the answer away.