Tintin in: The Black Island #2
Tintin in: The Black Island
Episode 1
Beginner
Hi, I'm Ben, and welcome to Ben's Language Lab. Stories are one of the best ways to improve at a language, and stories with pictures are even better. So today, we're going to read a comic together. This video is meant for beginner English learners. If you need, there are subtitles available, or you can see the entire transcript on benslanguagelab.com. make sure you subscribe for more videos like this one. Your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. Right now, we're reading Tintin and the Black Island. If you haven't seen the other episodes, click on the link in the description to watch from the beginning. All right, let's start learning. In the last episode, we were watching Tintin as he got wrongfully accused of a crime he didn't commit. It looked like he had done something, as he had this and this in his pockets, but he didn't do anything. He was asleep. He couldn't have committed the crime. And he's with these two dumb policemen who are trying to capture him. And so, what is Tintin going to do? Is he going to escape and get out of there, or is he going to be taken prisoner, not hostage? Is he going to be taken prisoner? Well, let's see. Remember, we're on the train and they're sitting and he's sitting with the two policemen who have fallen fast asleep. And Snowy notices something right here as Tintin is thinking aloud. It's true. Everything points to my guilt. And the guard can swear I was trying to get away. Very neatly planned. But why? And by whom? Let's break that down a little bit. So guilt is whose fault it is, right? So it looks like Tin Tin did it, and so he is guilty. It's his guilt. And the guard, that's the person on the train who caught Tintin, he said, come here, you. The guard saw Tintin trying to get out of the train and escape. And so it was very neatly planned. Somebody set this up. It's very smart. But why? Why would they do that? And who would do, who would do that? Why? It's Tintin didn't do anything. Did he? but he then notices, oh, the key to the handcuffs, right? The handcuffs are on his wrists so he can't pull them apart, right? The handcuffs are on, but Snowy grabs the key. Well done, Snowy, bring it here. And so Snowy brings the key over and then Tintin unlocks his own handcuffs and he can get free. And the two police guards are still, Sound asleep. In English, we use Z's like that to be somebody sleeping. Or snoring, usually. Right, snoring. And so Tintin knows, I gotta get off this train. And so he also pulls the emergency brake, slowing the whole train down. And then the luggage falls directly onto the policeman's head. And then they go, oh, goodness gracious. We stopped. Good heavens. Where's Tintin? They notice he's not with them. And then the other one says, I don't know. Where did he go? And they say, he's given us the slip. Got away with handcuffs too. What a cheek. And then he's walking away. To be precise, he's given us away. Slipped us the handcuffs, too. What a sneak! And then, of course, they're connected by their hands, and so they both fall onto the ground like a bunch of fools. And so what's happening here, to be clear, to be precise, what he does is he repeats very similar things to what he said, but he switches some words around so that it sounds ridiculous. Because what he said was he's given us the slip. When you give someone the slip, that means that you escape, you get away from them. And so Tintin gave them the slip. And he got away with the handcuffs too. And then what a cheek. Cheeky or to be a cheek is when usually a younger person is doing something sort of clever or naughty, right? They shouldn't be doing that. They're pretty cheeky. It has nothing to do with your actual cheeks. It's just called cheeky. And then he says, he's given us away, which doesn't make sense because if you give somebody away, you'd be giving them away for free, I guess. And he slipped us the handcuffs too. That's true. If you slip somebody something, it means to secretly give them, right? So if you're in class and you have a friend next to you, you could write them a little note and slip them the note. Anyways, moving on from these two dumb policemen. We see that Tintin is walking somewhere very nice an hour later. Oh good, a village. Perhaps I can hire a car to take me to the coast. So he wants to go to the coast, which is where the water meets the land. So the land is here and this is where the ocean is, right along the edge, that's the coast. And he wants to hire a car, so he wants to find somebody who wants to pay somebody to drive him to the coast. and he hears clink, clink, clink. And so we find some geese here, but Tintin is going to walk into here because he hears some noises, because he wants to get to the coast. But then we see, uh-oh, just wait till I get my hands on him. And to be precise, er, just wait till we get our hands, because they don't have all of their hands yet, because they're connected together. And we see the blacksmith, that's this guy, is helping them to break the chain on the handcuffs. So he's using his hammer and he's going clink, clink, clink, and hitting the nail or whatever this is, the dowel. I don't know if there's really a term for this, but he's hitting it over and over and over again to break the chain link. And then somebody walks in and says, hello. And they both go, Tintin? Um, oh, you! And Snowy is also very surprised. Surprised! And so they both take off running. They both run away from the two policemen who yell at him. Hey! Stop right there! Don't move anymore! That's what they call putting your head into the lion's mouth. So when you put your head into the lion's mouth, that's a phrase that's saying if there's a lion, which is the animal, it's like a giant cat. I don't think I have a picture of a lion, but like they have two ears and they've got like the big mane around. The Lion King is a famous movie, Simba, nevermind. But they're big animals with big teeth. And if you put your head into the mouth, you're risking the fact that the lion could snap shut on your head. And so it's a way of saying that he took a big, dumb risk. He went right to where the police officers were for no reason. And so he turns a corner, and they yell from the other side of the wall, stop him! Stop him! Oh, I like how Snowy's sort of coming out of the frame a little bit. His paw is outside of the border. And then we see the two men running across. They continue to chase Tintin. And then they don't know where he's, where has he gone? Where's Tintin? We've lost him. He's ran away. And so they go back to the old man and say, excuse me, sir. Have you seen a young man running past your house? And then the old man says, hmm, let me see. A young man, you say? That'd be him, I saw, with a little white dog, going like the wind he was. He himself, or hid himself over among those trees, over there. Aha, we've got him now. And so the old man is explaining to Professor, Professor, no, Inspector Thompson. He says he saw a young man, that's Tintin, right? And he was with a little white dog, that's Snowy, and he was going like the wind. That means you're running very fast, right? The wind is... And if you're running like the wind, you're running really fast. And he hid himself, so he's hiding, over in the trees, over there, he's pointing. And then they go, yes, we have him now, we know where he is. However, Snowy, as Snowy jumps out chasing the cat, running after the cat. And of course, Thompson recognizes that Snowy is Tintin's dog. And then he says, oh, Snowy's given the game away. It's Tintin. So to give the game away, or to give something away, is to show somebody the truth, or in this case to obviously say that, oh, I'm actually Tin Tin, I'm not an old man. To give the game away is a bit of an old-fashioned phrase, so it's not as common anymore, but it's when you sort of, if you're playing a game of some kind, you lose on purpose, right? You've given the game away, you give it to the other people. And they yell to him, stop, you're under arrest. Right? Under arrest is when the police stop you for doing something bad. But Tintin is not going to have any of it. He continues to run away because he's innocent. And so he's running away. He loses his coat and the beard is in his hand. And Thompson and Thompson are chasing him, and they say, we're gaining on him. We're faster than him. To gain on somebody is when two things are chasing each other. So this thing is chasing this thing. They're even in this shot. They're even. But if thing two is gaining on them, it's going to catch them. And so to be precise, we're crash, right? Of course they fall down again because they were still connected by the handcuffs and they ran, tried to run right through the lamppost. A bunch of fools. And so Tintin continues to run along the road on his own, running away from them. And then he finds Snowy who got, looks like he got beaten up by the cat, right? He's got a little bandage on his face because the cat must've scratched him. And he's all feels bad for causing a problem. And he says, it's your own fault. If you'd kept quiet, if you'd kept quiet, none of this would have happened. Here comes a lorry going our way. I'll try to thumb a ride. So a lorry is like a truck like this. Again, it's another sort of old fashioned word, but it's a truck in this case. And it's going the same direction we're going. We're going that way, that way, and the lorry is going that way as well. So they're going our way. And I'll thumb a ride, right? So that means you, that's the trick. You hold out your thumb and you say, can I get a ride with you? Can I go? I'm going this way. It's also called hitchhiking in English. So you see, he's got his thumb out. He's trying to thumb a ride and they slow down and say, and they pick them up. Cause now we see that Tintin and Snowy are in there. Lucky for me, you're going right to the docks. I'm trying to catch the cross-channel ferry. Think we'll make it? So the docks are on the coast and they go out into the water. It makes it easier to get on a boat. We'll see the docks in a second because they're going there. And so he's trying to get a ferry, which is just a big boat, and the cross channel. So the channel is, if this is one country right here, and this is a country here, this is water, right? This is the channel, right? So the channel goes between two countries or two things, I guess. It doesn't exactly have to be countries. but he wants to get through the channel. So he must be in France right now trying to get to England, because that's where we know where he wants to go. And there's the English channel that goes between the two countries. Think we'll make it? And so that's asking if they'll make it on time, right? Are we fast enough to catch the ferry? And here he is. This is the ferry. We're now on there. And the guy is saying, all right, haul off the gangway. And so this is the gangway. And hauling it off is to bring it off the boat. When you're on a boat, there are a lot of different words that get used that are not normal common English. And so you'll see a lot of random words get used, such as gangway and haul off. But here we are. And then we see our two bad guys from earlier. So, my friend, we are safely away. Our little plan was a good one, eh? And so they were from the other episode from before, and we know that they were the ones who actually stopped the train. And so then the other one says, not bad at all. By the time Tintin is finished proving his innocence, we shall be well clear. And so our little plan, right, that was the plan to set up Tintin, it was a good one. Good plan. And he's saying that Tintin is going to be fine. They're not going to be able to charge him with an actual crime because he's innocent, but it will take time, right? By the time Tintin has finished proving his innocence, we shall be well clear. So well clear as you're far away, right? They're going to be somewhere else totally. And they're going to be well clear. However, uh-oh, what's this? A question mark as Tintin runs up the gangway and jumps into the ferry at the last possible second. Phew, he says. And so now they go, ugh, don't let him see us. We can't do anything here on the boat, right? They're saying that there's nothing they can, they can't knock him out, they can't charge him with another crime, and so it's best to stay hidden from Tintin. And so now we see that they're on the boat, right? This is the ferry that is going between the channels. So here's the water. And so this must be the channel. So they're going in the direction of some other country. In this case, probably England. Let's see. We reach Dover in an hour's time. A train from there will get me to Littlegate at 10 past five. Then I'll take a taxi to east down from the Littlegate station. So now he's planning how he's going to get around things. And so we know he's going to Dover, which is in Southern England, and then he's gonna go to Littlegate at 10 past five, right? So that's, yeah, 10 past five. So that's 5.10 is when he's going to get there. And then he'll take a taxi to East Down from Littlegate Station, right? Because we know he has to get to East Down, because that's what they said in the last episode. And so we know that he's done, he gets to Little Gate. This is a way of speeding up time, right? Because we don't need to see Tintin travel all that way. And so we might as well make it a little bit more efficient by saying, okay, he's now in Little Gate, which is the last stop before East Down. Then he's on his way out. So he's walking out. There's a man with a briefcase. That's what this is. He's got his coat over his arm. And Snowy is right behind him as they're walking out of the boat, or of the station, rather. And so now he's here and he's going to get a taxi. A taxi is a car that will take you somewhere else for money. And so he's asking the man, can you drive me to East Down? And the man says, yes, sir. Of course I can drive you to East Down. Now these two men are talking to this guy and says, I'm glad to see you, Ivan. No time to explain. Follow that taxi. These are the two men that know something about Tintin and they're going to follow after him, right? So that's them right there, right? This is where they went, right? They're all three in this car right now. And they're following this taxi, which is going to East Down. So that's what's going on now. We don't really know what these guys are doing yet. They're still suspicious, but we'll see what happens soon. However, we'll have to see in the next episode because that is all for this one. We're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for watching and enjoying. And make sure to subscribe to the channel and comment with how it went. Did you enjoy the episode? What did you learn? And remember, all the transcripts for all episodes and more is available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Have a good one.
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