Tintin in: The Black Island #14
Tintin in: The Black Island
Episode 14
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben. 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. If you need, there are subtitles available, or you can see the entire transcript on my website, benslanguagelab.com. Just make sure you subscribe for more videos like this one. And for now, your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. Right now, we're reading Tintin and the Black Island, and we're almost finished. If you haven't seen the other episodes, click the link in the description to watch from the beginning. All right, let's start learning. Last time, Tintin had just trapped the bad guys in the basement. He had found their secret place where they were making money, right? That was their hideout. And he trapped these two men, and there was a gun, and they fought, and there was a printing press. That's this. And so now, he has just knocked out Ivan and Herr Müller from the beginning of the comic. And so we're going to see what happens next because he's now leaving with Snowy. And so, they close the door and, ouch! Snowy's tail, his tail, gets caught in the door. It gets caught right in the door and boom! Whoa, whoa! Owie! And then Snowy says, okay, but mind what you're doing this time, as Tintin is thinking and says, all right, fully loaded, that's better. Still, I hope we, I shan't need to use it. Now, let's go. Because remember last time the gun wasn't loaded, there was no bullets in it. Now he's put some bullets in it so it's fully loaded. And so that's better, but he hopes that he won't need to use it. He doesn't want to shoot anybody. Of course, that would be a bad thing to do. He will if he has to, if he must, but he doesn't want to. And so they're walking down the tunnel and they hear from the end, right? You see this is coming from the end of the tunnel up the stairs. Somebody's whistling a song, right? These are music notes, music notes. And in a comic, they signify somebody is humming, that's humming or whistling. And so we hear somebody at the end and they go, Huh? What's that? And so they walk up the stairs. Here they go up the stairs and from around the corner they hear... A good day's work, Renko. That's dispositive Tintin once and for all. And so now we see this man again, who was shooting at Tintin earlier as he was in the cave, and he's putting the monkey, the gorilla, back in his cage, right? This is his cage. There's bars here. These are bars on the cage. And he's locking him in with a key. A good day's work, Renko. Good job. You did good today. And we've gotten rid of Tintin. We've disposed of Tintin. Once and for all. And that's like saying the last and final time. We did it. It's complete. Once and for all. Forever. However, Tintin says, then let me be the first to congratulate you, because he's giving Ranko praise. He's saying, good job, Ranko. And so Tintin's making a joke. Good job. Yeah, you did a great job disposing of me, because I'm still here. And that guy goes. And he says something, swears, and curses of some kind. And then he goes, a ghost! A Tintin's ghost! Right, a ghost is, ooooh, a dead person who's come back to life to do something, right? And then we see, uh-oh, Ranko is grabbing the keys from inside of his cage. He's reaching over and grabbing the keys. And it looks like Snowy is watching him. But this man thinks that Tintin's dead. He thinks that Tintin is a ghost now, a spirit. Spirit of the dead, have mercy on me. Mercy. Mercy is when you let somebody go that maybe doesn't deserve it. So being merciful is saying, I forgive you. You killed me, but I forgive you. So he's begging Tintin to have mercy and not kill him too. But then Tintin looks at Snowy and says, he's gone off of his head, he's gone crazy. Spare me, for pity's sake, forgive me, forgive me. And he's bowing down at Tintin's feet and he doesn't want to be smitten or killed by this ghost of Tintin, who's not really a ghost, he just escaped. By the way, to smite, that word I use, smitten, is sort of a word for when a spirit or a ghost or a god chooses to end somebody, to smite someone. It's a very, it feels very almost religious, the word. Anyways, the man is asking for forgiveness, but then he goes, whoosh, and he grabs Tintin's leg, yow, and he drops the gun, And then he says, that's a little jujitsu, my clever friend. Jujitsu is a contact sport, a wrestling sport, where you pull people and you wrestle them and you get them in headlocks and things. And so he was pretending he was making Tintin think that he was totally crazy so that he could get his foot and pull it out so that Tintin would fall down. And then he says, that's a little jujitsu, my clever friend. And then Tintin says, and that's a straight left to the jaw, right? And so a left is his foot, right? His left foot, right? Left, right, left, right. At least for me, it might be reversed on the camera. And he kicks him with his left foot straight, right? Totally straight, not bent, straight like that. and kicks him right in the jaw. This is your jaw right here, jaw. And that hurts if you get, oh, just smacked right there. But then, uh-oh, the gorilla Ranko comes out of his cage because he picked up the keys, right? And then Tintin goes, huh? He looks behind him and then grabs the gun and says, let's see what this does. Let's see what effect this will have. Bang, and he shoots the gun upwards into the ceiling, which frightens and startles the gorilla. But then, a piece of stone falls right on Tintin's head. Poor Tintin. And by the way, effect is like what happens after something. So the effect of something. We often talk about cause and effect, right? If I hit one thing, the other, there's an effect that happens. And so in this case, is the gorilla going to run away? Is he going to attack Tintin? Or is something going to fall on his head? And so then Ranko comes closer and looks at Tintin and then picks him up. He grabs him around the middle. Sorry, I had a sneeze. Oh my god. Okay, well, that's gonna stay in the video. I apologize. But he picks up Tintin around the middle and Snowy goes, oh, he'll eat Tintin. He's going to eat Tintin. And we see there's spit coming out of his mouth as Ranko walks away. And then so then Snowy starts to bark, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and he drops Tintin. He startles and drops Tintin right on flat, poosh, on his face. Poor Tintin is getting quish, quish, quish, hit everywhere today. He must feel very tired and bruised. A bruise, by the way, is when you get hit with something and you can see it, there's like a spot on your arm that's blue or black, that's a bruise. But then Tintin, or Snowy, is chasing Renko away back into his cage. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, barking at him. And then he says, that's got rid of him. Now, to help Tintin, right, to get rid of someone. He's gone away, he's gotten rid of. But now Tintin needs help. Tintin is knocked out. And so, Snowy, starts to lick him right in the face. And then he goes, and then Snowy says, golly, what's the matter now? Because Tintin wakes up again, but then Tintin sees Renko right there. And then, but Snowy goes, oh, that's nothing. It's only him again. Watch this, right? It's only him again. It doesn't matter. Watch this, Tintin. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then Renko. is very scared of Snowy, and so he runs back into his cage. And then he says, you frightened him to death, Snowy. He's so scared of you, he's frightened to death. Silly, isn't it? Imagine, think, a great big animal that scared of a tiny little dog, right? He's scared out of his wits, right? Your wits is like a way to saying your smartness, right? How smart you are. And he's scared so much that he can't think. He's scared out of his wits. And then Snowy, of course, is also very frightened of spiders. Right, so this is a spider and Snowy goes, and he runs away around the corner because he is frightened to wits of a tiny little spider, of course. And Tintin goes, what? What the heck? What are you doing? And then he goes, Snowy, Snowy, where are you? Snowy? And then he goes, oh, there you are, Lionheart. Come on, we've got to search the rest of this place. Lionheart is saying that he's very brave, which he's not because he ran from a spider. And so that's the joke. Lionheart, very funny. Ha ha ha, Tintin. So now they're going to go search the rest of the place. And when you search, it's when you look around, you look for things, you find stuff, and so they're gonna go around the rest of the castle, the entire rest of the castle, upstairs, downstairs, everywhere else, and look for things. And then he says, shh, I can hear someone talking on the other side of that door. So on one side, there's Tintin and Snowy, they're on this side, and on the other side, over here, there's somebody talking. And then we hear, he's won the first round, but let's see what happens now. He can make a mistake. This is it. He's coming towards us. And we tend to go, uh-oh, are they watching me? Do they know where I am? And then he enters the room and goes, hands up. Put your hands in the air. And then, oh, it's just the TV. It's only the television set. We don't really say television anymore. We just say TV. And it's only the TV. And set is also just, you can add that there, but that's also pretty old. A set can just be like this thing, basically. One final loop, and Johnny James, aerobatic champion, comes into land. Just listen to the crowd cheering. Woo! Woo! Right, that's the crowd cheering. And then he says some sort of air display, because it looks like he's in an airplane, right, and going. who are doing all sorts of tricks and acrobatics, aerobatics, as they call them. Because acrobatics are with your body, but aerobatics are with an airplane or in the air. And so then we hear the television continues playing. The next item in our telerecording is high-speed formation flying by a squadron from RAF Fighter Command. And then Tintin, of course, is not watching the TV anymore and goes over to the desk and says, let's have a look at that desk. Let's see what's on here. What's on here? We see some papers, a book, a lamp, right? And then he's looking at the papers and says, good heavens, what a stroke of luck. A list of all of their contacts. Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, Holland, Austria, all over the place. What a catch for the police. They have a list of other countries where they have contacts. So people that are helping them. Contacts. So those are friends or enemies or not really enemies, friends or co-workers or whatever are other contacts you have in different countries. And you can actually tell that this is a very old comic because Czechoslovakia is not one country anymore. It's two countries. Holland is called the Netherlands, right? So those are slightly older names for countries, but they still existed. And so here we see the list of contacts, right? In Prague, in, um, I don't recognize any of these other ones. Amsterdam, right, there's Amsterdam, right, so all of these contacts that he's found. And then we hear again on the television set, on the TV. And here comes another competitor. Number, number, hello? He doesn't seem to be listed on the official program. But what does that matter? He's really terrific. Just look at that. He must have nerves of steel. This is incredible. He's a genius. Pilots his plane with superb confidence. A fantastic series of acrobatics. And then we see it's actually Thompson and Thompson and the engineer who doesn't know how to fly an airplane. And he's saying, land, land in the name of the law. And he says, I only wish I could. I don't know how. And they're going up and down and up and all around because he's not a pilot. Let's look at a couple of words in here. So fantastic, series. A series is when you do one, two, three, four things at once. That's why a TV show is sometimes called a series. You see one, two, three, four in series. He's a genius with superb confidence. Superb is great, fantastic, amazing. And confidence is he's very confident. I am the best pilot in the world. But he's really not. He's an engineer who's not a pilot at all. He just doesn't know how to land. Anything else interesting over here? I'm not really sure I think at all. Oh, nerves of steel. Nerves of steel. Your nerves are when you're nervous or afraid, and nerves are sort of that opposite, like if you can resist being afraid or being nervous. And so he's very firm. He has nerves of steel. He does not get nervous. He does not get afraid because he's with superb confidence and a genius and did a fantastic series of aerobatics. And then we come back, and now the plane comes roaring down, skims over the field, and shoots up like a rocket. And then they say again, stop! We want to get down, do you hear? So here's a good one, though. Shoots up like a rocket is what I just did. Boom! Just goes directly up really quickly. The other word here that is good is skims over, and so that means he came really, so here's the ground, and then he went, really skimmed over the ground, right, to skim something. He's just the top, right, you touch it very lightly on the top. Now he's heading for the ground again, and into another flawless loop he goes. Then, good heavens, one of the passengers has slipped out of his seat. This is terrible. So he went heading for the ground, so he was diving, right? And then a loop is all the way around. I can't do that with my hand, right, where you go around like a loop. And then, oh no, good heavens, one of the passengers is falling out of the plane. He's falling out. The only other thing here is flawless. Perfect. Amazing. No problems whatsoever. However, we're going to have to figure out what happens to this poor falling Thompson and or Thompson in the next episode, because we're going to leave it there for today. Thank you for watching and enjoying. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and comment below with how it went. And remember, transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
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