Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn #11
Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn
Episode 11
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. If you need, there are subtitles available, or the entire transcript is on benslanguagelab.com. That's what I say in a different series. I'm glad you could make it today. So make sure you subscribe for more videos like this one and completely different ones. Right now, your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. We're currently reading Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn. 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. Remember last time, the two Thompsons were looking for various cleaners, different cleaners in the city, because they found this code inside the man's jacket, the pickpocket's jacket. So let's see what happens next. So they were looking, and then we go to some days later. Some days later, for Mr. Tintin, and then they're unloading this package, and this woman says, oh, he's on the first floor. Mr. Tintin is on the first floor. All right, then she asks, all right, everything okay? Okay, we're okay. And now they're going upstairs with the package. Mr. Tintin, here's the dinner service you ordered. Me, I haven't ordered anything, Tintin says. as they bring up their dinner service to Tintin, but he says, I didn't do anything. But it's addressed to you. Look, he says, and shows them the card. There's this card with his name on it. This must say Tintin on it. But then, oh no, they put something over his mouth. to put him to sleep and they grab him. The two men grab Tintin around, this one has him on by the wrist, he grabs him on the wrist, and this one grabs him up around the head. What's happening to Tintin? Right, the chloroform's done the trick. Quick, shove him in the crate. Wait, I'll shut the door, the other man says. So now that Tintin is unconscious, He's knocked out cold because of the chloroform, which has done the trick. And so they're going to shove him into the crate. They're going to put him inside the crate here. So he'll be inside the crate. And then the man says, oh, quick, I should shut the door because the door is open, right? He opened the door. Hello. Now they're going to shut it again and shut the door. When something does the trick, that means that it's worked, it's functioned. So let's say something's not working on my device, right, this is up there. Oh no, what happened? I can't get this to go away. Oh, that did the trick, that fixed it, there we go. But oh no, Snowy is inside the apartment. Snowy is there and he starts barking. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wasn't Mr. Tintin in, they ask him, or she asks them, rather. And they say, yes, but there's some mistake. He hasn't ordered anything, is what they say. He didn't ask for a ginormous box with, that was fragile on it. Fragile means that it's easy to break. So if they drop this, it'll go, and there'll be like glass or something like that. And then they are leaving the apartment building and they and they look up and see snowy that confounded tykes at the window a Tyke is like a little creature or something like that and so that confounded dog that which is a like a way to curse something that damn dog is at the window and And then Captain Haddock is walking along, and he sees Snowy and says, oh, hello, Snowy. What's the matter? What's wrong, Snowy? And he's barking, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Because the men obviously have Tintin. What's going to happen here? Snowy, Snowy, be careful. You'll fall, he says as Snowy's leaning out the window. He's. He falls down and Captain Haddock catches him in his arms. He catches him right in his arms. But then Snowy jumps out of his arms and is running after Tintin because they took Tintin. They kidnapped Tintin. Tintin's been kidnapped. And then Captain Haddock is going, what? The dog's gone crazy. Look at him chasing that van, is what he says. This is the van and he's chasing it. He's running after the van. It's funny, says the landlady. He never leaves his master as a rule. This is a bit of an old-fashioned way of saying something like it never happens, right? It's like it's Snowy's rule that he must stay with Snowy, his master. His master is Tintin, and that's the owner of a pet usually. is what we say for a master. So Snowy's master is Tintin. But he never leaves him. Well, because we know that Tintin is in here. That's where Tintin is. And then he asks, is Mr. Tintin upstairs? Yes, he's in. And then she's cooking. She's making something. She's cooking. And then we hear, Mrs. Finch, Mrs. Finch, Tintin is in his room. Not in, then where can he be? Because he's not in his apartment, he's not in his room, is what Haddock finds out, because he's not there. He's... Crap, my pen. I just threw my pen. But then where can he be? And then we see Snowy on a path following Tintin. Snowy is so sad because Tintin was taken. The next morning, we see Tintin wake up. Huh? Where on earth am I? He says. Where have I, where am I? Where have I gone to? It looks very much as if I'm a prisoner. A prisoner is someone who can't leave. They're in prison. So in this case, there's no doors he can open. He's been taken. Yes, a prisoner, we hear over here. This is somebody speaking. Ha ha, you are a prisoner. You're stuck here, you're trapped. Nobody there, but I wasn't dreaming, somebody spoke. Because when he turns around, there's nobody. There's nobody else in the room. I don't see anybody else, but yes, someone spoke. What, who, who are you? And where are you? He's asking. He wants to know where the voice is, because he can hear the voice, but he can't see the person speaking. So he says, who are you? And where are you? Who am I? says the voice. I'm the ghost of the captain of the unicorn. And we see it sort of coming from the wall. It sounds like the wall is speaking. And he claims to be the captain of the unicorn, or rather, his ghost. A ghost is someone who's dead, but they're still here, right? And so we often draw them like this. Right, there's some little eyes, right, that's a ghost. Ooh, I'm a ghost. And so he says, I'm the ghost of the captain of the unicorn. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And he laughs. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That frightened you, didn't it? Come over to the door. Come over. Come on. It says the voice is telling him to go to the door here. This is the door. And he was scared, right? Because he was told he's the ghost and that he was laughing. And so he hid. He's scared a little bit. But then he says, come to the door. Come on. Come nearer. Good. Now, can you see the speaking tube? And so there's, this is a speaking tube is this tube is something long and round like this and a speaking tube in this case is that you, you speak through in order to transmit your voice to some other part of the house or wherever they are. Who are you and what do you want with me? He says, who am I? You must allow me to remain anonymous. And why did I have you kidnapped? Well, you have guessed that, no doubt. So kidnapped, like we said, is when you get somebody is taken and they don't want to be. Tintin didn't want to go with these men. They, and then took him away. That's kidnapping. And the voice also wants to be anonymous. Anonymous is when nobody knows who you are. So if you, on YouTube, you can leave an anonymous comment if it doesn't have your name, if your name is like English Learner 157 or something like that, and you can leave a comment below this video, and I don't know who you are, you're anonymous. And so in this case, anonymous is when they don't know who somebody is, he's secret still. But he's saying that Tintin has guessed why he was kidnapped. And that's because, I want to know where you have hidden the two parchments you stole from me. Me? I stole two parchments? But I never had more than one, he says. Remember the parchments that had been in the masts? The little pieces of paper? That's what this person wants. They want the two pieces of parchment. Because he thinks that Tintin has two. But Tintin says, me, I stole two parchments, but I never had more than one. I only ever had one. Come on now, let's be sensible. I'd collected two of the three scrolls. You took them from me. That night when I had your flat searched, only the third one was found in your wallet. Where are the other two? How should I know, he says. So what's happening here is that this person, whoever's here, this anonymous person, had his flat searched. That's his apartment. They went into his apartment and looked for things. They only found the third one. So there's three parchments, one, two, three. We'll call them one, two, three. And so he says the man said, I'd collected two of the three. So he has these two. He's already collected two of the three. And then he looked in his flat and in his apartment and only found the third one. And that was in his wallet. But where are the other two, he asks. How should I know, says Tintin, I don't have them. And then the other man says, as you like, right, that's when, whatever, I don't believe you, as you like, but I warn you, I know of several ways to loosen stubborn tongues. Let's highlight that. I'll give you two hours to tell me where you hid those scrolls, and if you won't talk, you'll soon see the sort of man I am. Oh, but I tell you, oh, but I tell you, oh, he's cut off, the gangster. So let's break this down here. So to loosen your tongue is when it means to make you talk about something. So if you're telling a lie and you loosen your tongue, you start to tell the truth. Think about it as we think of the tongue as being, you're holding your tongue, right? I'm not gonna say anything. I'm not gonna tell you the truth. They're not gonna tell you where the scrolls are. And he's saying that he might have a stubborn tongue, and that's when you don't want to do something, right? And so he's threatening to use his several ways to make Tintin tell him, to force him to tell him, which might be torture, right? Which is not good. And so then he'll show him the sort of man he is, as a threat. But then Tintin starts to say, oh, but I tell you, and then he trails off. Oh, he's cut off. And that means that he's stopped talking. He's gone away or he's closed the pipe or something like that. He can't hear him anymore. So like on a phone, right, you can go to the, you hang up really quickly, right? And you cut off or hang up. And so that's what he's done. Now, I'm in a fine mess. How do I get out of this one? He's trapped. He doesn't know what to do. How does he escape? And meanwhile, we see Snowy out on the dirt road, walking in the rain. It's raining. It's wet. He's tired. And he's thinking of Tintin in his mind. He has Tintin on his mind. And let's see what happens next. And then he's walking along, he's walking, and a car comes by. Sploosh! And it hits a puddle of mud and pshhh! And it covers Snowy in mud. Pshhh! Poor dog. Now we're back to Tintin. He's thinking. Two hours. Two hours to get out of here. I have two hours to escape. How do I do it? How can I get out? And then he sees this wooden beam. Here's this beam, this big wooden post thing. And he goes, hmm, I wonder if I could use this beam as a battering ram against the door. So a battering ram is something you use to boosh. and you hit it against a door to hopefully open it. If something's locked, you might take a battering ram to because it's big and it's heavy and it has a lot of mass. And so he might want to try to use this beam as a battering ram. But it's hopeless. I can hardly lift it. It's too heavy. No use. No good. But in two hours, I must be miles away. I have to escape. He has to be outside and run. He has to be with Snowy, or else they're going to torture him. But then he sees something. What's that up on the ceiling? There's a little hook, it looks like. Eureka, he says, he thinks. First, I better block up this speaking tube with my handkerchief. This is his handkerchief. You use it to blow your nose or to wipe sweat or something like that. This is a glasses cleaner I have, but it's sort of similar. And so he's going to stuff the thing inside the speaking pipe. Then no noise will hear. What? Oh, then no one will hear any noise I may make. Because he's going to make noise and they can hear him. So he wants it so they can't hear him. Oh, by the way, Eureka is what you might say if you have an idea. Eureka! It's when you have a good idea. So, he plugs up the hole, plugs it up, and now, now to work. As fast as I can, I'm going to work. First, I'll knot together these sheets and blankets. And so he's taking them all and he's tying them together to make a long kind of rope thing here. So he's gonna knot them together. A knot is what you tie. I don't really have anything to tie right now. I have this cable, but if I tie it, right? So here's something like this. This is a kind of knot, right? Like that K-N-O-T. And so he's tied things together. Get out of here. He's tied this all together, and then he's tying it to the beam and says, and pull! Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! That's something you might say to lift something really heavy. And then he falls on his face. Dang it, I'll start again. I've simply got to move this beam. He's pulling it so far and heavy and he's trying to work to move this beam. However, we're going to have to see if it's successful 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 below with how it went. Remember, transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye.
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