Tintin in: The Black Island #9
Tintin in: The Black Island
Episode 9
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. 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. 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 the link in the description to watch from the beginning. Alright, let's start learning. Last time, Tintin had just found this poor train conductor, who was attacked while he was driving the train. They forced him to stop the train and then the thugs, the crooks, got off the train and ran away, right? They ran away. So now Tintin wants to go after them and find them. And he's looking for a lead, a clue that he wants to discover. So let's see what happens. And he says, after he was talking to the man, he says, oh, that's all right. My dog will pick up their trail in a flash. Snowy? Snowy? A flash, in a flash, means really quickly, right? It's as quickly as a flash of light. Right away, instantly. And to pick up their trail means that he'll go, They went that way. He can smell their scent, their bodies, and he can follow them, right? Because he's a dog, right? However, now, where's Snowy? Where's he gone? Snowy? Hey, Snowy? Snowy? Tinsen's now yelling, he's whistling. Oh, shoot, I keep not changing that. He's whistling for Snowy. Here's Snowy. That's a whistle. and he's yelling to try to get Snowy's attention. But Snowy says, it's okay, I'm coming. Give a dog a chance, right? Because if we remember last time, Snowy was drinking a bunch of whiskey, right? He was drinking whiskey out of the barrel, bloop, bloop, bloop, and he got drunk, which means that he can't quite stand up straight right he's walking on his back legs dogs don't do that and he's slurring his words to slur your words is when you talk like this right that's when you slur your words and so now Tintin says good heavens he's tight tight is a very old-fashioned way to say drunk it's nobody ever says it but it means that you're And so now Snowy says, just look what I can do. And he falls flat on his face. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Disgusting. You're worse than a mongrel from the gutter. And so you should be ashamed of yourself, right? You should feel bad. What are you doing, Snowy? and disgusting, nasty, horrifying. You're worse than a mongrel from the gutter. The gutter is on a street, right? So here's the street, right? Here's the sidewalk, this part, and this part here is the gutter, right? And so there's water that goes down here and it can be pretty gross and there's a lot of stuff there, right? Cause you're in the gutter, right? That extra space there. And so Tintin's saying that he's worse than somebody who fell into the gutter and is maybe passed out in the dirty water, and he's worse than a mongrel from the gutter, is what Snowy says. Or what Tintin says. And now we see that Snowy is seeing two Tintins. He's seeing double. He's seeing two Tintins because he's, ooh, ooh, ooh. And now Tintin says, now pull yourself together and pick up the scent. We're chasing gangsters, remember? It's not fair. Two of you picking on a poor little dog, right? Because he sees two Tintins, obviously. And so he thinks that they're ganging up on him, right? When there's two or more people all at one person, we say that's they're ganging up on. But so what does Tintin want Snowy to do? What does Tintin need from Snowy? He wants him to pull himself together and pick up the scent. The scent, like we said, and pick up the scent is, they went that way, right? To pick up their scent. And he wants him to pull himself together. And that's when somebody is having a hard time, or they're sad, or they're crying, or something is happening. They feel, oh, I feel terrible. And somebody else says, pull yourself together. And they go, I'm ready. You have to pull yourself together, get all ready to go. I'm ready to go. I pulled myself together. And so Snowy starts to sniff. He goes He starts to follow this trail. He follows it along with Tingen with him and then they're walking They're continuing to go and Snowy's still a little bit Out of it, right? He's still drunk and then they find a road and And then Tenzin says, ah, a pub. And Snowy's got wind of something. And Snowy going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right, he's barking. A pub is a place to go have a drink, right? Ironically. And so that's where you might get a beer, right? You have your, that's my beer that I'm going to draw, right? You have your beer. in a pub, is what it's called. And Snowy's got wind of something, right? To get wind of is when you sort of find something out. So in this case, ooh, I smell something. He got wind of something. You can also get wind of news or information if, what was that? You got wind of that information, right? You heard something or learned something. And so now, And Tintin runs after Snowy because Snowy goes into the gate barking, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And Snowy says, he's after them. He never really lets me down. He never really lets me down. Sorry, it's important to stress there. He's after them. Those are the gangsters, the bad guys, is what Tintin thinks. And he says that Snowy never lets me down. To let someone down is when you disappoint them, right? So in this case, he would let somebody down by not doing the right thing, by not finding the gangsters or something like that. And so when you let somebody down, it's disappointing, right? So they're excited, yes, and then they go, You let me down. I don't know what to say. And we see the in is called ye white heart, ye white heart. Fun fact, ye, that part there, is actually just the word the or the, but this is an old way to write it. It doesn't actually mean anything else. It is the white heart, essentially, but in an old, old way. That's like hundreds of years ago, a very long time ago. But that, when you see ye something, it just means the or the. And so we see Snowy barking, Tintin runs after him around the side and, if you don't watch out, you'll come to a sticky end, Tintin says to Snowy because he found more whiskey. That's all he did. He smelled more whiskey, right? We see some bottles and barrels of whiskey, right? This is a barrel of whiskey, some barrels of whiskey here. And so now Tintin grabs Snowy by the ear, he's holding on to his ear, and he says, if you don't watch out, you'll come to a sticky end. And that's a way of threatening, a sticky end is when somebody dies in a bad way. It's a little more playful than that, but now we see somebody with a cane. reaching out of the door with their cane. They put it around Tintin's neck and they go, whoop! And they pull him right out, right into the inn. And we see it's Thompson and Thompson. And they say, so we meet again, eh? However, we see Himmel, it's Himmler and Ivan are in the inn. Remember, in, like this place is I-N-N, also known as a pub, right? But they can be in, N, in, right? So that's where they are right now. So it might be called a pub, an inn, same sort of thing. And so Mr. Muller says, Himmel. And then the two men see him, because remember, they were looking for him. They were, where is Tintin? And oops, sorry, just kicked my door. And then Tintin sees them and goes, great snakes, it's them. They say, what, why? And then he starts to run after them. You won't get away this time. And then Thompson grabs him by the neck, grabs him by the neck and says, whoa, they're not so fast, right? And then he says, let me go. Don't you understand? They're thugs, gangsters. They'll escape, right? They'll get away. They'll run away again with the money, right? There's money in there. Come on now, money, fake money, really. And so, don't you understand? They're gangsters. They'll escape. We know your little tricks, right? Your tricks are the things that you use to get away, right? You lie, or you say, they're thugs, look at them, and then you run this way, right? Those are his little tricks, they think. However, we know that Tintin is innocent. And so they're running away from the White Hart together with the money, and they ask, how did he manage to get here so soon? He's asking in his German accent that I remembered this time. I remembered his German accent. And now Tintin says, it's absurd. They're crooks, I tell you, and you're letting them get away. So you say, in the meantime, we're arresting you. The robbery on the train, or have you forgotten that little episode? And that was from way back in episode one or two, I think, where Tintin was blamed for robbing somebody's wallet. He took somebody's wallet with their money in it. took it, right? Actually, they gave it to him and pretended like he took it. They gave him the wallet and then said, he stole my wallet. Oh no! Right? And so, Tintin says, it's absurd. Absurd. It's crazy. Right? Those are just the same word. It's crazy. They're crooks. They made that fake money. And you're letting them get away, right? That's escape, right? These are the same sort of idea, escape and get away. However, Thompson and Thompson don't believe him. They don't think he's telling the truth. And he says, it's ridiculous. You're not still flogging that dead horse. Look here, let's make a deal. Don't arrest me till those thugs are behind bars. Then I'll give myself up. So, So flogging a dead horse Is a sort of old phrase, but it basically means so to flog is to whip And so in this case when you flog a dead horse, it doesn't do anything right you've been doing it for so long it doesn't help anymore and So this phrase is when you're doing something that doesn't make sense. And so it's ridiculous You're doing something that doesn't make sense Okay, look here. Let's make a deal, right? They come to an agreement, a deal, and say, don't arrest me, don't arrest me yet, yet. First, we'll go find these crooks, we'll arrest them, and then we can talk about my problem. And Tintin really wants these guys to be behind bars in prison, right? He wants them to be in jail because they're bad, they're crooks, right? They tried to kill him even. They left him in a burning house. Oops. Let's get this correct again. There we go. Yeah, there we go. Okay. And so now Thompson and Thompson say, hmm, what do you think? And then the other one says, hmm, it's a highly irregular, but on second thoughts, we might stretch a point. And so these are some, some phrases, some old phrases. And so highly irregular is a normal word. It means it's uncommon, weird. That's weird. Okay. That's what this word means. But on second thoughts, we might stretch a point. That's an old phrase as well. I don't really know what it means, but it's try it out, right? We'll give him a try, a shot. And so then they say, all right, we agree. We'll let you go on one condition. So one condition is that they go with Tintin, right? So the one and two are with Tintin and Snowy, right? They're not alone. And that's their one condition, the one way that something can happen. And then they're saying to each other, they're whispering, eh, two minds with one thought, eh? If he pulls something off, we'll get all the credit. And so that means they're thinking together, right? They're working together between them, two minds, one thought. They're thinking the same thing. And so if Tintin finds the man, right, if Tintin finds these guys and they arrest them, right, Thompson and Thompson, they get all the benefit, right? The chief of police or whoever says, good job, Thompson and Thompson, and they go, thank you, because they'll get all the credit, right? And that's when somebody is giving the credit for something, saying, you did this, good job. Even though it was Tintin who did it, Tintin and Snowy. And so we see Snowy is following his nose as they were walking down the road. Oops, that's not an arrow. Down the road. And so Tintin says, good job. Keep it up, Snowy. You're doing great. And now they get into the Manchester Flying Club, or Hulchester, not Manchester, sorry, Hulchester Flying Club, which a flying club is where you go to fly an airplane. Right, flying club, I don't know. And he says, I only hope we're not too late, because if the two men had taken off, right, they'd be too late. They can't do anything, they've flown away. And so Tintin hopes they're not too late. And so he says, look, over there, that plane taking off, I bet it's them. Right, so here we see a plane taking off and it probably has Mullah and Ivan inside of the plane. Right, they're probably in there right now. And they say, watch out, he's diving at us. To dive is when you go, right, to dive at them, right? They're coming right at them, right? They're going to hit them. And so they, they duck out of the way, they dodge, they lie on the ground and Snowy runs away. As we see Müller and Ivan dive them in the plane to try to scare them away. And then he says, ruffians, to be precise, road hogs. Um, so this is just waves of saying idiots, you fools, you horrible, mean people. Right. And then they both say our hats and then they say there over there. Right. So we hear, we see the hats are over here. and said, the vandals are best hats, almost brand new, a perfect pair of bowlers. Oh, my hair's crazy now. My hair got messed up. Vandals are people that destroy things, right? So if you take on somebody's property, on somebody's building, that's vandalism because you're destroying something else. But those were their best hats, brand new bowlers. This is just the type of hat, it's a bowling hat or a bowler hat rather. And then they said, I remember when we bought them seven years ago, a perfect, a bowl of perfect pearlers. Again, they say things that don't really make sense, right? A bowl of perfect pearlers doesn't really mean anything. There's no significance to what he said. However, seven years ago and almost brand new, also doesn't work right he's saying that they're brand new which is recently bought seven years ago they're they're a little cuckoo cuckoo anyways And so now we see, I'm beginning to agree with Tintin. They look like crooks. They look like bad people. As they grab their hats, to be precise, so do I. Tintin may be right. They cook like rooks. Again, saying nonsense. To cook is when you make food, right? You're cooking something. And rooks are in chess. They're the piece that looks like this, right? So the castle is also the name for it. Oh my God, I can't draw. But they're that piece in chess. But again, doesn't mean anything. And then we hear, and they both go, what's up? And then we hear Tintin say, wait for me. I'll be back. Goodbye. See you later, he says, as he rides off in the red plane as they both go, oh, you. They raise their fists to sort of shout at Tintin. However, we're going to have to see what happens next in the next episode. 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 below with how it went. What did you learn? And remember, there are transcripts for all of these episodes on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye!
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