Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn #13
Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn
Episode 13
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben, and welcome to Ben's Language Lab. Stories are one of the best ways 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 so if you need, there are subtitles available, or you can see the entire transcript on benslanguagelab.com. Make sure that you subscribe for more videos like this one. Right now, your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. We're currently reading Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn, but if you haven't seen the other episodes, you should click the link in the description to watch from the beginning. All right, let's start learning. So last time, Tintin had just escaped from the underground place he was being held captive. They had put him there as a prisoner, and he escaped up the stairs and out into this room where there's a suit of armor and some stairs, and he started to go up those stairs. Here he is walking up the stairs. So let's see what happens. Oh, and now we see him coming through this big door. It's a double door because there's two of them. Double is two, so there's two doors. And he walks into this, what looks like a large room, a big room. There's a painting on the wall. There's a fireplace. This is where you might have a fire. That's fire right there. There's a phone right here. This is closer to us in the foreground. There's a chair. There's what maybe would be a window right here. I'm not really sure what this is. And there's also a suit of armor on the wall. There's a suit of armor and then a couple of different weapons. So this part looks like a spear or a halberd or something like that. Then he walks over to the phone. He marches over to the phone a little bit and he says, no time to lose. I must have these gangsters arrested at once. So he's gonna call the police. He's gonna grab the phone and he's going to call the police because these guys grabbed him, right? That's not very nice. But then he sees this note and picks it up and goes, as he's very surprised, a big exclamation mark. Let's see what happens then. Come on, scroll up. There we go. Ah, now I see what he meant. Now I see what he meant. The man who was shot pointing to the birds. Oh, no, different layers here. Okay. Now I see what he meant, Dash. The band who was shot pointing to the birds. The confusing thing is that usually on lines like this in a book, if you see a dash, it means that the word continues on the next one. So for example, let's say you have the word attackers and it goes A-T-T, uh-oh, I ran out of space. So I put a dash and then I do A-C-K-E-R-S. That means these words are connected. Attackers is what that would say. So I got confused when I saw that. But it just says, now I see what he meant, the man who was being shot, pointing to the birds. Because remember a couple of episodes ago, he was pointing at birds before he died, and they didn't know why. He was giving us the name of his attackers. Just look at this letter. And so we see here, the name of this person is Bird. This says Messers. Messers, message. I don't know what that says, really. M plus M and G Bird, those are their names. Oh, oh, they must be French. Monsieur M and G Bird, I think it must be, not English. They're antique dealers, we can see that there. And then that says Marlin Spike Hall or Martin Spike Hall, something like that. And then that's in Marvin, Marlinshire. Yeah, that looks like Mar, something, Marlinshire, England. And so the guy who died was pointing at the little birds, right, the birds, caw, caw, to say that that's their name. And then he says, well, quick, I must ring the captain. I must call the captain. He's going to take up the phone and he's going to dial in or he's going to dial like this. It's one of those old rotary phones. That's called a rotary phone. It's an old type of phone where you had a sort of a section like this with a bunch of things around here, there was 10 in total, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then 10, which is zero, and you put your finger in it, and you'd go all the way to that number, and then you'd let go. Finger, number, finger, and it's called a rotary phone, because you had to rotate that thing to choose the different numbers. And so he's going to ring the captain, he's gonna call the captain. And then the captain hears, brring, brring, brring, hello? Yes, it's me. Yes, who's speaking? What, Tintin? I, where are you? Hello? Hello, hello, are you there? He starts to yell or becomes afraid because he's talking to Tintin on the phone, but then Tintin stops answering because Tintin puts down the phone. He takes it away from his ear because he sees somebody enter. Because it looks like the butler. The butler is the person who helps in the house. And he must have asked him because Tintin is now responding to the man. What am I doing here? I'm Mr. Burr's new secretary. Didn't you know that? So the man must have come in and said, what are you doing here? To Tintin, to which he responded, what am I doing here? I'm Mr. Bird's new secretary. A secretary is somebody who takes your phone calls, they write you notes, and they help you with things. And so he's pretending to be a helper to Mr. Bird. But then the butler says, no, I hadn't heard. Please excuse me, sir. He says as he leaves because he doesn't want to be rude and doesn't want to stop something that was supposed to be happening. But then suddenly we hear on the intercom, somebody is yelling, hello, Nestor, Nestor. And then Tintin looks surprised and Nestor, the butler goes, huh? And then he walks over to the intercom here, which is what we call these, an intercom or an interconnected communication, I think, something like that. And then it says, hello, Nestor, a young ruffian's broken into the house. Stop him telephoning his accomplices. We're coming at once. Don't let him get away, whatever you do. And so, A young ruffian, that's Tintin. A ruffian, oh there we go, that's the dash I was talking about. When you have the dash there, it connects the two words. A ruffian is a youngster who's causing trouble, usually, or some sort of thug, might be a ruffian. So stop him from telephoning his accomplices, his friends. His accomplices are the people that are going to help him. And so this man is saying that Tintin broke into the house, he stole, he broke something and he entered the house, and he's going to steal things. And he's going to telephone, he's gonna phone his accomplices. But then, we're coming at once, don't let him get away, whatever you do, Nestor. And then Tintin starts talking quickly. Hello, Captain. I'm at Marlon Spike Hall. Bring the police. What? No, I'm not in Greece. In Marlon Spike Hall. Drop that telephone, you. Oh, he has a British accent. Drop that telephone, you. Sorry. And so, Of course, he's talking quickly, he's talking loud. And so Mr. Captain Haddock doesn't hear him very well. So firstly, he hears grease, because bring the police sounds a little bit like grease, a little bit. And then he says, Starling's bite? Hello, Starling's bite what? Marlon Spike Hall, Captain Marlon Spike. What? Martin's bike? Hello? Hello? Thundering typhoons. What's going on? He's very confused. He doesn't know what's happening. And now we see Nestor is grabbing at the phone. Give me that phone, you, sir. Give me that phone. Ruffian. Marlon Spike Hall. Marlon Spike. And then they both get, then Nestor tackles Tint and he grabs him, and they both go falling to the ground, which pulls the phone, because the phone has a cord, it has a cable. This is a cable. And so it pulls the cable, which pulls the phone, which then, conk, hits Nestor right in the head. And these old phones are kind of heavy. They weighed a lot. They had a lot of stuff in them. And so he's a little bit dazed. But then we see the two men running up the stairs. One of them has a gun in his hand. And then Tintin says, hello, Captain. Can you hear me? I'm at Marlin Spike Hall. No, Marlin Spike's the name. What sort of game? Hello? He's rung off. And so, of course, the captain is not understanding. He does not get it. He hears him say game because it sounds like name. He's not being very helpful. And then Nestor starts to shout, help, help, very loudly, help me. And so then Tintin goes, whack, and hits him right on the head with the phone, with the receiver is what that part's called. So whack. And then this man says, that was Nestor's voice. And so they run up more stairs. And then Tintin says, that's torn it, the telephone's broken. And so it looks like the telephone has broken in some way. Either this part or this part or maybe the cable has been cut or something like that. The telephone does not work. It is now broken. And Nestor is a little bit broken as well. There's only one thing to do. Run for it. Double quick, he says. So now Tintin doesn't have any other options. He's going to run away. And he says he's going to do it double quick, which is faster than regular quick. And now this guy is coming up to the door and he says, If he's here, he can't escape us. He's trapped because there's only one way out is through the door. But Tintin is also running toward the door. And then, uh-oh, we got to see what happens. The door starts to open and he goes, he gets very surprised and the door opens all the way and hits Tintin against the wall, and then the man says, by thunder, he's knocked out Nestor. Where's he gone? Quick fool, tell us. Did he have time to use the telephone? He did, he says, a little dazed. And so now this man wants to know where is Tintin? Where did he go? Where is he gone? And he says, quick, fool, which is actually talking to Nestor. Quick, fool, tell us, did he have time to use the telephone? Did he have time to make a call? Did he call someone? And then Nestor says, he did. Who did he get? He got me. And so who did he get? What he wants to know is who he called, who he talked to. Who did he get on the phone? But then Nestor responds that he got got. So when you get somebody, it means that you beat them or you win against them. And so Tintin got Nestor. And then Tintin says, OK, this is the part where I slip out. He says, he thinks to himself, he says very quietly. He's going to go ch-ch-ch. and walk outside very slowly. Gently does it. Gently now. That's very careful. When you're gentle, you don't want to drop something, right? It's breakable or delicate. And then the other one says, there, there he goes. He was hiding behind the door. And so he turns around with the gun and goes, and shoots at him. But Tintin's running, he's running down the stairs. He's running as fast as he can. Little fiend will get you dead or alive. And so a fiend is an evil person or an evil thing. So he's calling him evil. Will get you whether you're dead or alive. We don't care. And that's a phrase you might hear in old westerns or other movies or things like that. Dead or alive, all we want is that this person is not... they don't have a choice. They're either dead and they're... or we have them under our capture or something like that. But then Tintin is running down the stairs and he stops. And he looks at the suit of armor. Here's the suit of armor. He looks at it and goes, I have an idea. Quick, old man, lend me your halberd. So this is a halberd. It's like a big spear, big stick with a point on the end with a couple of points. And so he says, quick old man, that's like a way of saying my friend or dude in like old books and stuff like that. Nobody says it anymore, but you can say quick old man, lend me your halberd. So he's talking to the suit of armor and he grabs the halberd. Oops. And then he. Steady, steady, they're coming and we see him around the corner as they're coming down the stairs and he whoops, he trips them with the halberd. So you see they all get their feet caught on the halberd and They fall down. That's called tripping somebody. When you trip them, it means that you make them fall. So he ran down and hit the halberd right there. And then Tintin says, all right, this way out. He's going to leave running that direction. The front door just slammed. Get up, you two. He'll escape us. And they're both, oh, ouch. Oh, my back, my head. They're in pain, but he says he'll escape us because he heard the door slam. That's when the door goes. A door is slammed because Tintin ran outside and slammed the door behind him. Free at last, he says, and he starts to run across the field here, or the front. There he goes, and we see the little, the man who is chasing him. He's very small, a little bitty man. But then Tinid says, oh crumbs, they're after me again. They're still following me. But then he goes, missed. He's disappeared among the trees. So when you miss something, right, it goes, phew, phew, you don't hit. Hit is the opposite of miss. But then Tintin is now hiding in the trees. Here we see one tree, two trees, so there must be more trees kind of further away. So Tintin ran, is now hiding in the trees. Quick, fetch Brutus, Nestor. Quickly. Brutus? Very well, sir, he says. And so Brutus must be this dog looking forward. And then Tintin says, wow, what an enormous park. It's like a forest. So now we see a bunch of trees here, right, all around Tintin. It's like he's in a forest, but it's on this person's property, right? It's on, it's by his house. So here's this big fancy house and it has trees around it, which is why it's called a park and not actually a forest. And then we hear, woof, woof. And then Tintin goes, uh-oh, because Brutus is now out. And the man says, find him, Brutus, find him. And the dog is sniffing and trying to find Tintin's smell, his scent. Go on, find him. We mustn't lose the scent. So he wants him to find him. And to lose the scent is when you can't smell it anymore. He doesn't have it anymore. But then Brutus goes. He jumps away. He starts to run. And the man says, Brutus, here, Brutus, come. He wants the dog to come back. But Brutus is running away. He's running. He's running. Tintin is also running. And we see, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. And as the dog is barking and Tintin jumps over the log, he's running away. but we're gonna have to figure out what happens in the next episode. We're gonna leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Make sure that you subscribe for more videos like this one. And remember, there are transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time.
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