Tintin in: The Black Island #5
Tintin in: The Black Island
Episode 5
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 to 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 very beginning. Alright, let's start learning. Last time, we remember that Tintin had just gotten in a bit of a fight with this Herr Müller, and he was about to pull something out of his pocket. Remember that Tintin was held captive and he was getting away. He was escaping and had just started a fight with this man. What does he have? A gun. Oh my. Tintin, you get out of there. That's not very safe. But Tintin tackles him. He jumps on top of the man and pushes the gun away. But we hear a bang, and then Ivan, the driver, turns around. What was that noise? And then we see that Tintin and Herr Müller are fighting, and they're in the classic spiral of doom, of fighting, as you see in comics. And there's more bangs and gunshots, and Ivan comes running, and we enter the room and we see that Tintin is on top of Mila and the gun is still firing and Ivan is going, oh my, what is happening? And we see it's quite a nice room. There's something here on the ground, maybe cigarettes, or maybe they're for putting inside the gun. We see the telephone has been knocked over. It's lying on the ground. We see a lovely painting up here with a horse and rider. Looks like a very nice room. But Ivan says, quick, my automatic. An automatic would be referring to his weapon that is automatic, right? I mean, she doesn't manually have to reload it, right? So, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch is how it would work, automatic. However, boom, and then the painting of the horse that we just talked about gets hit with a bullet, crack, and falls, shmoosh, right onto Ivan's head, making him drop his gun. And then Tintin, oh, he tries to jump over Müller who gets him on his back. And then he says this word, it's empty. There's no more bullets left. Didn't do anything. It doesn't shoot anymore. It's empty. Nothing left. But Tintin goes, oof, what's going on? And so Hermula throws the gun at him instead, but Tintin ducks and he dodges to the side. He avoids the gun. He picks up a table and throws it right at him, hitting him square in the chest. Oof. Oh, wait, gotta get back. Ow, he says. Yow, and then he steps into the fire and his coat catches on fire here. And he reaches down to grab a burning log to throw at Tintin, who's running out of the room and avoids the burning log. Right, here's the burning log right there. But Tintin is able to avoid it and gets out, it looks like. But he says, Ivan's gun, and it's still loaded. Right, Ivan dropped his gun a second ago up here. Where is that? Ivan dropped his gun, and so now Herr Müller is picking it up, and he knows there's more bullets. But Tintin is running up the stairs, and we see Herr Müller coming out of the room saying, ah, I have him now. I have my German accent coming back. And he shoots at Tintin right as he gets through this door at the top of the stairs. Just before he makes it through, he gets in, he closes the door, and he locks it. He locks the door. We see it right there. That's what he's doing right there. He's locking the door. And then Hermila tries to, poof, open the door with his shoulder by knocking down the door. But Tintin has his back to it and he's holding it closed. But we see him trying to get in. so instead he tries shooting through the door bang bang zing and he knocks down this bottle and this glass cabinet and we see on here it says chloroform chloroform is a dangerous chemical that will make you Go to sleep. And so now Tintin is hearing, fire, fire, because we saw the fire start right here, right? And so the house is on fire, but Tintin is stuck. And so now we see Himmel is now noticing there's a fire as Ivan's yelling, fire, fire. And then he says, Himmel, that burning log I threw, it set the room alight. This is a German word, don't learn it, it's not English. And this word, a light, is a bit of an old-fashioned way to say on fire, right? You can also say a blaze, a light, anything like that. Typically, when we have an A at the beginning like this, it's like a way to sort of turn this word, so light, right? It's a light into a different kind of word, right? So the room is a light, not light. It is a light, which is a little bit different in the meaning. In this case, it means it is on fire, which is pretty big. And so now Tintin is wondering, fire, hmm, is it a real alarm or just a trick to make me open the door? Tintin is suspicious. He doesn't know if there actually is a fire, because he didn't really see what happened, or are they trying to get him to open the door? And an alarm is something that somebody might yell, like, fire, fire, if there's a fire or some kind of alarm. Ooh, that's also an alarm. It's an attention is trying to think but what's the matter? I feel dead tired Come on, this is no time to fall asleep. I simply must And he falls over onto his back because of the chloroform that was opened in the room is now starting to get to him to smell Put him to sleep. He felt dead tired dead tired is very tired when you feel like you're as tired as a dead person might be. And now we see Snowy outside looking into the house, which is on fire, which is not an alarm. But Tintin is out cold, right? He's unconscious. Out cold is a way to say unconscious. And he's unconscious on the ground, completely asleep while there's a fire. But then we see some two old men and maybe in the other town over or in the actual town itself saying look there a fire That's dr. Miller's place burning and then we hear at the fire station right that's an alarm sounding to get the fire crew ready for duty and then he says good the fire crew is another way to say firemen firefighters however you want to say it but the people that are going to go put out the fire and so they're ready to go they're ready for duty And then he says, come on, where's the key? He can't find the key, right? The key that unlocks the door. That's my drawing of the key. I must have put it somewhere as he's searching his body for his pockets for the keys. Whatever shall we do? There's a hole in my pocket. The key must have fallen through as I ran. So this guy can't find the key to open this door to get inside the fire station. And he notices that there's a hole in his pocket. A hole is, right, a little small opening or a hole in something and if it's in your pocket, things can fall out, right? And so he must have been walking along and the key just fell out of his pocket because there was a hole in it as he was running, right? Here he is here running and the key must have fallen out somewhere over there. And he goes, oh, idiot, come on, hurry, we'll have to search. And then they're looking for the key, and they see, oh, there it is, just in time. That magpie's got his eye on it. A magpie is a kind of bird, and they like shiny things. And the key is very shiny. Bling bling. Right, so this magpie might want to take the key. But they're looking all around the town, and they see it right here. But the bird does grab it. Stop! Thief! Drop that key! And they're trying to get the key back from the bird as the bird is flying away. Stop it! Drop the key! Meanwhile, Tintin is in a burning house with no open doors or windows, out completely cold, completely unconscious. What's going to happen to Tintin? And we see them still chasing the bird, all five of them, right? One, two, three, four, five of these firemen, firefighters, whatever you want to call them, trying to get the key back from his bird. Who would win? Five fully grown men or one little bird? And now we see them climbing the tree, trying to get up to the nest, and there's eggs that are falling onto their heads. Ah! Right, we see the eggs fall down onto them, but he does have the key. Got it, he says. And so now they run back to the fire station, and they put in the, open the door, quick. All right, just a minute, I, and he's trying the key. Goodness gracious, I've mixed them up. This isn't the station, the key to the station. And so to mix something up is when you confuse them, right? So we had one key and a second key and he confused them, he mixed them up. And so now he has to run back and find the other key and wham, he smashes right into this poor lady. Come on, give me my thing, there we go. And he smashes right into this lady who also has a key. So now they need to change, they need to fix it. They need to fix the problem because they mixed up their keys in the first place. And then he says, she says, there you are, Fred. How many times have I told you? That's the key to the jam cupboard. So she must be his wife or something like that, or must live with him because she's told him many times that this key Where is it? I don't see the other key, but this key goes to the jam cupboard. Jam is a kind of fruit preserve, so it's like a sauce that you can put on bread or other things that's made of fruit, and it's usually very sweet. But Fred took the key to the jam cupboard instead of to the fire station. What a fool. But now, finally, they can get into the fire truck, the fire brigade, and they can go to the house that is burning, that is on fire, to hopefully save Tintin. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. The fire truck is on its way to put out the fire. And then he says, what a cursed luck. The fire brigade. What's a cursed luck? The fire brigade. He's German, I forgot. He's got an accent. And then he says, anyone left inside the house, doctor? And the doctor says, fortunately not. We all escaped. Fortunately not. We all escaped. Which is not true. Tintin is inside, right? They were asking if there's anybody else inside. Anybody left inside? Anybody remaining? And then he lies and says, we all got out. However, Snowy knows that's not true. Woo, woo, woo, woo. They must save Tintin. How can I make them understand? And he's barking. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. That's my dog bark, by the way. I don't want to hurt my voice. And so they must save Tintin. How can I make them understand? As he's barking at the man who's putting out the fire. And then he says, I must stop them at all costs or they'll find him. And so he wants to stop them from putting out the fire. He wants the house to burn because it means that Tintin won't be found. He doesn't want them to go in and see and, who's that? That's Tintin. They don't want him to be found. And so they're busy for now. They're busy now for it. No one will notice me. And he has a knife, and he cuts the hose, but the hose sprays him with water right in the face. He drops his knife, and the man goes, huh? What happened? Where's my water? And he says, hey, you cut the hose. You took a knife, and you cut the hose. And so Ivan goes, whoosh, and hits him right in the face. Bam. And Hermilla goes, what? What's going on? And then he grabs him by the arm, Ivan does, and pulls him along and says, we've had it, chief. Come on, run. And he's thinking, it beats me why he cut it. Why would he cut it? I can't figure it out. And this is a good phrase. It beats me. means that, I don't know. I don't know why. Why did he cut it? Beats me, right? But Snowy knows. Snowy grabs his arm and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then the man says, now don't you start. What's the matter? What's wrong? What's happening? What's the matter? He says to him. And Snowy goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And he says, I wonder, he wants something. Good heavens, there can't be someone inside. And now he figures it out. Good heavens, there can't be someone inside. As Snowy is right by the door going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then he says, I'd better make quite certain, I better be sure that there's nobody inside, is what now the man is thinking. So he grabs a ladder. And he runs over to the house, he puts the ladder up to the second floor, and he climbs up the ladder, he's climbing up the ladder, to see if there's anybody still inside the house. And he's going in very carefully, and Snowy's asking himself, why doesn't he come back? Where is that man? And then we see the house burning a little bit more, and then Tintin and the fireman are now going down the ladder again. And he said, we go to the next morning. And what happened to Dr. Miller, he asks, as we see Tingen in bed in the hospital with the same fireman, I think, or maybe it's somebody, you know, this one has glasses. Yeah, this one doesn't have glasses, right? She doesn't have any glasses on, so it's a different person. But Tingen is asking what happened. And he says, I'm afraid my men couldn't catch him. His car was standing by, just by the house. He hopped in with his driver and they went off at top speed. We hadn't a chance. All right, so let's break that down a little bit. We couldn't catch him, right? To catch somebody is when you, ha ha, I got you, right? To grab somebody and catch them. His car was ready, it was standing by, and it was ready to go. It was already on, it had gas, everything was prepared, and so it was just ready to go. He hopped in, got into the car very quickly, and they drove off at top speed. They had no chance of catching him. And now Tintin's thinking, ah, a pity. I'd give a lot to know why they were so anxious to get rid of me. Why did they want to kill Tintin? He doesn't even know yet. And so why were they so anxious to get rid of him? Nevermind, he says. Perhaps I'll find a clue at the house to put me on their track again. And so he wants to go back to the house and look for clues, for hints, for things that might lead him to find them. Where are they? Remember back to the other episode with the clue that he found on the note, the torn up paper? That was a clue. And so he wants to look for more clues. And then he says, the fire can't have destroyed everything. There must be something that survived. And then the doctor says, you're not getting out of bed. Stay where you are. And then Tintin says, of course, I feel absolutely all right. Everything is just fine. And he's walking along and he goes back to the house. He goes up the road with Snowy and says, heavens, there isn't much left of Dr. Muller's house. It's gutted. right gutted is when something is everything is taken out of the inside right everything is out nothing is left right your guts are what's inside here on your insides right your stomach your intestine everything that's in there is your guts and if it's something is gutted they're all You can do it with a house, with a car. It's often talked about with fish. You might have to gut a fish and take things out of it. The whole house is just completely gutted. However, we're going to have to figure out next time if Tintin actually finds any clues, because we're going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and for enjoying. Make sure that you subscribe to the channel and comment with how it went. What words did you learn? What was your favorite part? And remember that transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Have a good one. Bye bye.
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