Tintin in: The Black Island #4
Tintin in: The Black Island
Episode 4
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. 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. 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. Alright, let's get learning. So last time, you'll remember that we had left Tintin and Snowy in the forest. And Snowy had found a bone. That dog, oh, that dog. However, afterwards, Snowy started to notice something else. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. even though Tintin was saying, Snowy, come here at once. Come back here. So let's see what Snowy might have found. At first, Tintin doesn't care. He doesn't want to deal with Snowy anymore. So he starts walking the other direction. But Snowy behind him goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And he pulls on his pant leg. He tugs his pant leg towards the other thing. And Tintin goes, huh? What are you doing, Snowy? And he says, that's strange. He really does want me to follow him. So Snowy wants Tintin to go with him. He wants him to follow him. But why? What's going on? Is it another bone? So Tintin says, all right, I'll come, but woe betide you if it's just another bone. So this is another old-fashioned phrase, wo betide you. You're never going to find it, but what it essentially means is good luck. Because he's saying that if it's just another bone, Tintin is going to be so upset that wo better abide him, betide you. I don't really know what it exactly means, other than that's how it is used. Woe unto me is another phrase you might hear, but it's super rare and pretty old. But basically, it's saying, but you just wait. If it's another bone, ooh, you snowy, you dog, you. But let's see. And oh, look. There's something in the tree, it looks like. And Tintin goes, huh? What's that? A flying jacket? A jacket used for flying? Those thugs from the plane must have hidden them. So they took their jackets, their two jackets, and they hid them in the tree. When you hide something, you conceal it. You put it away so that other people can't see it. And Snowy's all happy that he found something. You see his little smile there. How cute. Let's see, in this word, I think we've seen this word before in this story, but a thug, remember, is sort of a bad person, a person that does naughty things, right? So they're usually bigger dudes, and they might be called thugs. Those thugs from the plane must have hidden them. Too much to hope they'd leave anything in the pockets. So Tintin is now checking the pockets of the coat to see if there's anything useful or any clues that he might find. And you see he puts his hand in the pocket and he says, ah, look there, some scraps of paper. Something's been torn up, right? When you tear something up, you, and so you might tear something up. Perhaps this will give us a lead. A lead is a clue, right? So it's something that Tintin can use to find the men. And so it might be a lead because it can lead him from step from A to B to C and then find the people or something like that, right? That's a lead that you can follow. And so he finds a couple of scraps of paper, right? These are all scraps of paper here. And so now we're going to see what they are. I've always liked puzzles, he says, and this one, and this time I've got a real one. So a puzzle is when you have to re-put things together, right? So you might have heard of a jigsaw puzzle, right? Those have pieces, right? That you have to figure out how they fit together. And so this one would fit into a piece that goes like this, right? So that's a puzzle. And so in this case, Tintin has to solve this puzzle. He has to put these all back together. And we can see there's some letters here. There's an L, there's an ER, TC, 24. And so we'll see if Tintin can solve this interesting puzzle. And we see that Snowy is chewing on his bone as happy as a dog. Let's see. Okay, well, that was easy. That's done it. He solved the puzzle. And so now we see that there's a message on here for East Down Sussex, Muller, and then of, or something like that. And there's a triangle, like right there, and it says 24 to 1H, which must be one hour or something like that. But he says, hmm, not much help. What on earth can it mean? What on earth? This is actually a relatively common phrase that you might hear. What on earth? It's a big question, right? It doesn't really mean nothing to do with the actual earth, but it's especially saying, like, I have no idea what's going on here. And then he says, oh, snowy, not again, and takes his bone and throws it over the bushes. Because he wants him to focus on the task at hand now, Snowy. You focus up, okay? And Snowy's now dreaming of his bone flying away. And he says, and let that be the end of bones for today. And then he gets, wham, smacked in the back of the head with a bone. Ouch, he says. is of course that would hurt. And then we see a man with a gun on his back, he must be a hunter, saying, can't you look what you're doing? Anyway, you're trespassing. This is private property. And Tintin says, I'm sorry, I didn't know. I lost my way. There's some good words in here. Let's look at these. We have trespassing, private property, and lost your way. So trespassing is when you're, oops. Come on now. Trespassing is when you're somewhere you should not be. Somewhere you're not allowed to be. And so you can think of the word pass specifically and like you're going past usually somebody else's property. So in this case, the man says this is private property. Property is a land or an area that somebody owns right so if you own a house that is your property Things are also property right this pen is my property. I own it as mine and And it's private, so private means that it belongs to a single person. If you think back to episode one, we learned about a private aircraft, a private aircraft that belongs to one person, right, like you or me. And so in this case, maybe this man or a club that he belongs to owns this land. And they say, nobody can come here. It's private property, and Tintin is trespassing. But then he says, I'm sorry, I didn't know. I got lost. I lost my way. I don't know where I am. If you're trying to figure out where you are, you've lost your way. And so let's see what happens. And the man says, all right this time, but don't let me catch you again. Take the path down the river and cross the bridge. You'll see the main road. So now the man is giving him directions because he understands that it's easy to find your way into the private property on accident and not mean it. And so he's telling Tintin how to get out. But he says also, don't let me catch you again, right, to find him here again or else he'll press charges or he'll do something, he'll tell the police maybe. And so Tintin and Snowy are walking down the path, down the river, like the man said, and he says to him, Snowy, are you trying to make a fool of me? Because Snowy still has the bone. And so he throws it across the river. Although let's quickly look at this, to make a fool of, oops, come on now, let's fix this, let's go, come on, make a fool of me. Are you trying to make a fool of me? When you make a fool of someone, you make somebody look stupid, right? And so in this case, he's, it's... Tintin does not want Snowy to have the bone, and Snowy keeps having the bone, and so he's not listening. And so he sort of feels like he's trying to make a fool of him. So he throws the bone across the river, and he crosses the bridge, like the man said. And he says, Snowy still has the bone. He went to get the bone. And he says, it must be a couple of miles to east down, which is where they're going, right? That's what the message said. But then, what's that? Oh my. We see Tintin is surprised because he sees a name, J, oops, it's very hard to read, J.W. Muller. Okay, I'm not gonna write it out, you can see it. But he sees a name and he remembers that's the name from up here, right? Muller, that's the same name. So what is, where are we, what is this? And so let's see, and then he says, hmm, he checks around, make sure that nobody's there, no one about, I'll take a look around. No one about is a little bit of an old term or more British, and it means no one around. There's nobody here, right? Nope, I don't see anybody, it's just me, so I'm gonna go look around. So he hops over the wall, he climbs down, and he sees Snowy with his bow and still, and he starts to explore this private property that is owned by, probably, Myla. And now we see, uh-oh, a big dog. Woof, woof. And Tintin goes, uh-oh. And he starts running away from the dog who's chasing him, going, woof, woof. Woof, woof, woof. And then he trips on a rock. Oh, my. He trips and he falls, saying, I'm done for. I'm totally lost. I'm done for. I'm going to be attacked by this dog, poor me. But then the dog leaps right over him, clean over Tintin, chasing Snowy with his bone in his mouth still. And then Tintin is wondering, what's going on? And he goes, Snowy, Snowy, he'll be eaten alive. The dog is going to eat him. And we hear woof, woof, and Snowy crying his eyes out because the big dog just wanted the bone. Grrr, don't touch my bone, you. Here, Snowy, come here. And so we know he's getting Snowy to come with him because he doesn't want the dog to come back and attack them again. And then we must get out. The dog may have raised the alarm. And so to raise the alarm is when you let people know that something is happening. And so in this case, the dog barking, the other people on the estate or in that private property might think, what's going on? Why is the dog barking? And they'll go to investigate to see what's happening with Tintin. And so they have to leave, they have to get out. But, yow! Oof! Ow, that looks like it hurt. A man-trap, he says. A trap for men. And so we see that he got his foot stuck in a man-trap. When he stepped down, it went, chook! And grabbed his foot. But hopefully it's not very, it's not too strong, so he didn't hurt himself too much. But now we see inside the house, ring, ring. And the man says, someone is caught in trap number nine. Let us take a look. That's my terrible German accent for you. And the other man is also going, and then he says from off screen here, what a pleasant surprise. Tintin himself comes specially to see me. Release him, Ivan. He won't run. And so now he's saying to him to open the trap, to let him go, to release him, because he's not going to run away. He's not going to escape because he has a gun, right? And so he's stuck there. Tintin can't do much else. There's a fly in here. Oh, but look, Snowy is now watching from behind the tree. They didn't take Snowy with him because he's just a dog. Right? But now we see that Tintin is in cuffs of some kind. He's got his hands behind his back. He can't do anything. And now this man says, get the car out. We are leaving at once. That's my German accent again. But he's going to leave with Tintin with the car. And so he's telling Ivan to get out the car. And now he says, it was a mistake to meddle in our affairs. I shall now have to dispose of you. And let me start highlighting these words. I shall now have to dispose of you. Fortunately, I happen to be medical superintendent of a private mental institution, a rather special institution. Not all of my patients are insane when they are admitted. And so Let's see. Let's let's break this down this threat So first, oh, right metal. That's another good one to metal. Ah, dang it. Come on now. Let's go. We're we got a thing to do here Metal in our affairs. So it was a mistake to metal in our affairs It's a metal in is when you do get into something else that you maybe shouldn't Get into for example if you have some some family that has some problems, you can meddle with their problems by saying, oh, you know what? She told me that, da, da, da. That's meddling with something. Or in this case, Tintin is meddling with their business. But he's a good guy, and they're bad guys, and so he's not really meddling in that way. But they think he is. And then affairs are just business, are stuff, whatever we're doing. Dispose of you is to get rid of somebody or in this case to make him disappear. Oh, come on. I Want to use my pen to cross out Tintin to dispose of him Tintin is no longer. He's disposed of And so he's now saying that luckily for him not for Tintin, but luckily for her Miller He is the superintendent, which means he works at a place, right? This means he's high up, he has control over. A mental institution. So a mental institution is an institution is just like an old place. Schools, government, hospitals, those are all institutions of some kind. but a mental institution is specifically for people who need to be put away for their own safety or the safety of others. So for, and especially in like 60, 70 years ago, it was more common to lock people away if they were a little crazy. And so that's where he wants to send Tintin. And he's also saying that not all of my patients are insane when they are admitted, so when they're brought in. And that's a threat, saying that they will become insane because they do terrible things to them, which is not good, obviously, because we like Tindin. Tindin is good. And so now we see Tintin is looking at the fire saying, I wonder, as we hear Heirmüller saying, but after eight hours of special treatment, they are unlikely to recover. Excuse me, I must make a telephone call and then I shall be entirely at your service. And so that's finishing his threat from before. He's saying that after just eight hours of treatment, Tintin will be crazy. He'll go totally nuts. But now he's going to leave to talk on the telephone and then he'll put his full attention on Tintin. But Tintin is now thinking, I wonder, um, As the man is on the phone, hello, Horncliffe? I have a young patient for you. Highly dangerous. He will require treatment. You understand? Good. And so we see that he's making arrangements to send Tintin to this place with Horncliffe is the name of the person. And he's calling him dangerous to hint at the Adhorned Cliff that he needs this special treatment to get rid of him, to dispose of Tintin. But Tintin is now thinking, a burning log? Hmm, what can I do? Ooh, I got one. Hold it against the rope. And he's thinking, right, we see that he's thinking with these little thought bubbles. And so now he has the rope that's behind his hands against the log, right? So he's trying to burn the rope away. As usual, he seems entirely sane, but after the treatment, you follow me. Right, and so now he's definitely threatening to make Tintin go insane. And then we see he says, zah, and he hangs up the phone. And then Tinted goes, ba-bam, and there, and knocks him right on the face. And he falls down and he's reaching for something in his pocket, but we're going to have to find out what that is in the next episode. We're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for watching and enjoying. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and comment with how the lesson went. What did you learn? And remember, there are transcripts for all episodes available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye bye.
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