Tintin in: The Black Island #12
Tintin in: The Black Island
Episode 12
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben, and welcome to Ben's Language Lab. Stories are one of the best methods to improve at a language, and stories with pictures are even better. And so today, we're going to read a comic together. This video is meant for beginner-level English learners, and 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. But for now, your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. We're reading Tintin and the Black Island. If you haven't seen the other episodes, click the link in the description to watch from the beginning. Alright, let's get learning. Last time, Tintin had just set off on a boat. He'd set off to go to the Black Island. But if you remember, nobody else wants him to go. Tintin, don't go. Stay here, please. Right? This man didn't want to take him. This man didn't want to take him. And he had to buy the entire boat from this man in order to go. And the old man from the pub said, another one off to his doom. He's going to be doomed. He's going to die. So let's see what happens. So here we see Tintin and Snowy on the boat, approaching the Black Island, right? That's this island here. It's called the Black Island because look, that's the color it is. However, when you get closer to it, so he's far away, and then they'll get closer, get closer, get closer, get closer. When you get closer to it, you see that the rocks are gray, right? They're not black. They're actually just gray rocks. That's that color, right? They're a gray color. Oh, that's red. Come on now. I've hit done. That's their gray color, right? Even lighter than that. Let's go back to my red. And then there's a castle, right? We see a castle up on those rocks with birds, a ton of birds flying around this tower, right? This is a tall tower and the birds are flying around there. And here we see Snowy, no, that's Tintin. And this is Snowy on the boat approaching the Black Island, right? They're getting closer, right? As you get closer to something, that's approaching. And so they're approaching the Black Island. So he gets out of the boat and he ties it up, right? It's on a rope, right? So there's a rope here, right there. You see that? There's a rope coming from the boat and he ties the rope around a rock. And then they're walking and he has a stick, a walking stick, if you will. And he says, they were right in Kiltoch. This is quite a sinister place. Sinister is when something just feels evil, right? It feels unsafe. Right, sort of sinister, right? There's something evil happening. There's something strange going on. And he says, I think we'll explore the castle first, right? So to explore is when you are out and you're looking for something, hmm, what's this? Interesting, interesting, right? That's exploring. And they're going to go explore the castle, which is this, right? A castle is I don't really have any other way to explain it, right? It's a castle. There's big ones. There's pretty small ones But this one looks like it's been abandoned There's nobody living here, right? There's stuff growing on the walls. The walls are falling apart, right? But they're falling apart And so it looks abandoned Let's keep going. He opens the door and the door opens or no, it's already open, nevermind. The door was open and he looks inside and he walks in with Snowy behind him, right? And he says, that must be the staircase to the tower, right? Remember the tower we saw? That's this one here. And so this is the staircase, right? Right here. That's going up into the tower. And he sees it there, and he's going to go now up this staircase. And then he comes out to the top and sees, wow, what a marvelous view. It looks so cool. You can see out into the water. It's just beautiful. What a marvelous view. But then, thump, thump. We hear something from inside here. What's that? They both are a little frightened and startled. We hear thump, thump, roar, boom, boom, boom, boom. We see a monkey of some kind beating his chest. A gorilla, a gorilla, he yells. What a monster! And he's calling the gorilla a monster, right? Monsters are creatures that are usually evil. It is just a big gorilla that can really, really hurt you. And then Snowy goes, hit him, Tintin! Quunk! And he hits him, thwack on the head, and his walking stick explodes, right? We have one, two, three pieces. It explodes as it cracks onto the gorilla's head. which makes him beat his chest, right? And Tintin is so scared. His knees are coming together and his body, his body language is getting really tight, right? He's saying, Right? And then the gorilla attacks them. And so Tintin dodges out of the way. Right? He tries to avoid the gorilla's attack. And he runs back down the stairs with Snowy. And we see the gorilla has his hat in his hand. He has Tintin's hat. And then he keeps running down and sees great snakes! The door! It's closed! Right? Remember the door was open, right? He didn't open it, it was already open. The door was open, but now it's closed? We still hear thump, thump, and Snowy is jumping down the last stairs. and then the door is locked, right? Somebody took the door and they, with a key and they locked it, right? We're caught in a trap, right? A trap is when somebody plans to catch you, right? And so the typical trap is like this, and it grabs your foot or something like that. But in this case, they had the door open, Tintin went inside and they closed the door with the gorilla inside. And so he says, come on, let's find another way out. A way out is through here, to go from inside to outside, a way out. However, they need to find another one, because this one is not going to work. But it's too late. Oh no, the gorilla came down the stairs and is wearing Tintin's hat. He has Tintin's hat on. And so Tintin is backing away. as he's frightened and so he grabs a rock and he grabs and picks up a rock and says, if I can't knock him out this time, we're finished. And so when you knock somebody out, when you hit them on the head and they fall asleep, that's knocking someone out. And he has one chance. This time, right? If I can't knock him out this time, not next time, this time, we're finished. The gorilla's going to grab us and kill us. And the gorilla goes rawr. Don't miss, Tintin, says Snowy. You got this. Hit him in the head. And so he throws the rock. And it hits him, boom, right in the head. However, good heavens, he didn't even feel it, right? The gorilla is so big that a rock is like a tiny thing hitting him, right? It doesn't actually hurt him. And he's saying that he didn't even feel it. When you feel something, ow, like you notice it, right? But if you don't feel something, it's when you don't notice it, right? And so in this case, he didn't get hurt. And then he says, what's he doing? He seems to be looking for something. The gorilla is now looking around. And Tintin wonders, why? Why is the gorilla looking around? And then he says, oh, crumbs, as the gorilla picks up a big block and moves to throw it at Tintin. Crash! And he blows a hole right through the door because Tintin dodges what the gorilla threw, the big cinder block, the big rock that he threw. And he says, Saved! As they jump out the hole in the door and Snowy comes to saying, Saved! Right? We're saved. We're safe now. And we see the hand of the gorilla coming out, trying to grab Snowy and grabs him right by the neck. And then he goes rawr. He has Snowy in his hands, but then Snowy goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and he barks at him. He barks right at the gorilla and spooks him. He startles the gorilla and scares him away, right? The gorilla is now running away with his hand on his head. He's frightened. He's scared. And so Snowy gets out this time, safe and sound. As Tintin is still running away, saying, run for dear life, back to the boat. So, for dear life is something that we often will say after a thing to do, and it's like, do it or you're gonna die, right? So running for dear life is when you're just so terrified that you're gonna die that you're running, running, running, running to go back to the boat, right? The boat is down here, and we'll get, and Snowy will get back to the boat, or Tintin will get back to the boat, hopefully with Snowy. That was my terrible little drawing of a boat. And then it's vanished. The boat's gone, right? The boat used to be right there, but no more. Where'd it go? It is not there. And so Snowy catches up with Tintin. He comes after him and Tintin asks him, what do we do now? What are our options? What else can we do? And then we hear up there, go on, seek them, Ranko, seek them. To seek something is to look for, right? Or to smell them or to hear them, right? To find something, right? And so it sounds like somebody is speaking to an animal, right? Because you wouldn't really say to a person, seek them. You'd probably say find them. But seek them sounds more like an animal of some kind. So we'll see. And then we hear, seek them, Renko, seek them. And then, uh-oh, that's the gorilla. The gorilla, there's a man with him, too. There's a human also with the gorilla telling him to go find them, to seek them. And the gorilla's name is Renko, apparently. And we hear, roar. And we hear Snowy barking, right? And then, oh, look, a cave, right? A cave is this opening in the rock, right, where there's space to go inside. That's a cave. Well done, Snowy. Good job. Perhaps I can squeeze in it, right? To squeeze is when you squeeze something, right? You can squeeze my water bottle. But somebody can squeeze in something if it's really tight, right? If your shirt is really, really tight, you might squeeze into your shirt or into your pants of some kind, and somebody's going to squeeze into the cave. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! And then, oh, what a stroke of luck. Phew, that's lucky, right? A stroke of luck that the cave widens out, right? It starts really narrow and then gets wider, right? So here there's barely any space, but back here there's much more space. And so it widens out. And then we hear, shh, they're coming. Don't make a noise. And then he says, the man with the whip, That's a whip, right? Go on, Renko, go on. And he's wearing a green suit and telling the gorilla to go seek them, to go find those men or that man and his dog. And so we found, aha, so that's where he's hiding. We've got him now and we see that Renko found the entrance to the cave, right? And so the man says that that's where they're, They're hiding, right? They're hidden. And he's got, and we've got them now. They're here. We have them. And then we hear, um, rawr! And then, oh no, help! He smelt us out. Thank goodness the entrance is so narrow, right? Because the gorilla can't squeeze inside. He can't fit inside because it's too small. And then Snowy starts barking. Woo, woo, woo, woo! And we see the man and the gorilla both are frightened. And now we hear him start talking. Congratulations, my dear Tintin. You've made a brilliant getaway. You've even managed to evade our faithful Ranko. You are quite safe in your cave, except. And so he made a brilliant getaway. He escaped. He's so smart that he was able to escape from faithful Ranko. Somebody that's faithful follows instructions, right? And so they follow instructions very well, and they're always loyal. Loyal's another word for faithful. And so Snowy, for example, is very, very faithful to Tintin, right? Snowy follows Tintin, he likes Tintin, he helps Tintin in every scenario. And so Snowy is very faithful. And apparently, so is Ranko. And so they would be safe in their cave except there's water, right? The tide is coming up. The water is rising because that's how the ocean works, right? The water goes up and the water goes down. That water is called the tide. And so now the tide is coming in or raising. And so he says, there's one enemy you won't escape, the sea, my dear, my dear Tintin. You have forgotten the sea. The tide is rising. Unless you prefer to come out and meet little Ranko again, you'll drown in your hole like a rat. So to drown, we talked about in another episode, and that's when, right, you have so much water that you die. And so if the water comes up to here, right and they're completely covered in water. They're not gonna be able to breathe and they'll die And we also say that the one enemy the one Evil person the one evil thing is the sea the ocean Right because like I said the tide is rising the tide is coming in the water is rising So your options are to stay or you can come out and meet Ranko again, right? You can come out and meet Ranko, the gorilla. Or else you're going to drown in the cave in your little hole like a rat, right? A rat is the little mouse-like creature and they eat cheese or things and they're usually dirty is how we talk about them in English at least. and they're bad luck creatures of some kind. And so calling somebody a rat is a negative thing. And so we see that the water is coming in and Tintin goes, we've got to get out of here. And to Snowy, and we see Snowy is, he's perched on the little rock. He doesn't want to get his feet wet. And so Tintin starts to sneak out and look outside and he sees the water is coming in faster. The water is rising. It's up to his chin at this point. And then we hear bang, bang, right? And we see there's some bullets that come in, right? They're shooting at Tintin now. They really, really want him dead, right? However, we're going to have to see what happens in the next episode. We're going to leave it here for today. Thanks for watching and enjoying. Make sure to subscribe to the channel for more content like this, and comment down below with how this episode went. What did you learn? And remember, all transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye!
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