Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn #5
Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn
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 you subscribe for more videos like this one. 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. Let's start learning. If you remember to last time, Tintin and the locksmith and the landlady had just crashed into Captain Haddock's apartment where he's holding a sword and is wearing a hat with a feather sticking out of it. Let's see what happens. Oh, I'm going to go back to the top. And he says, avast, pirates avast there. And then Tintin says, Captain, avast is a bit of an old word. It sounds very piratey, right? If somebody has ar, right, that's a pirate, sort of like this guy. And it means hello or look out or something like that. Avast, pirates, avast there. And then avast, you dogs, sea gherkins, baboons. And so he's yelling threats at them, right? Gherkin is a cucumber. They're green, they're like this, they taste good. But a sea cucumber, right, is like an idiot, a fool. You dogs, you dirty dogs, you baboons. A baboon is a type of monkey, right? And he scares them out of his apartment. Then he says, buccaneers, filibusters, bagpipers, gallows fodder. A bunch more insults. A buccaneer is like a pirate, very similar. A filibuster, I don't know. Bagpipers, a bagpipe is a type of instrument where you blow into it and you have this and it. Sort of like that, a bagpipe. And then gallows fodder. This one's kind of funny. The gallows is where they would hang people, right? You put something over your neck and then and you get hung or hanged, actually is the proper way to say it, hanged. And so he's saying that you ought to be hanged. They should hang you to them. So insults, essentially. But then he says, we've won, that's got them on the run with a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. We've won, we did it, they've gone away, they're on the run. They're running away, on the run. And then a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum is like a sea shanty, a song with a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. Rum is a liquor, an alcohol, very common on boats in that time. And so they like to drink rum. And then Tintin asks him, what's all this play acting for? Play acting is when you dress up like a pirate and have a sword and pretend to be a pirate, right? Like kids like to play act, right? I'm a superhero. You're a superhero. Let's play. Right? Play acting. And he says, play acting? This isn't just an act, or this isn't a play. Come in and you'll understand. He wants to show Tintin something. Come in and we'll look, you'll understand. Look here, you see that man? And then Tintin responds, yes, he's one of your ancestors. What about it? Why does that matter? Well, last night, when I was thinking about that strange business of the ships, I suddenly remembered that up in the attic I had an old sea chest belonging to my ancestor. And this is it. So a sea chest is this, a chest is what you might open and have stuff inside. And a sea chest is for going to sea, for going on a boat. When you go on a boat, you wanna bring your stuff with you so that you can live there. Because they're gonna live there for a month, two months, a year, a very long time. And so he had an old sea chest up in his attic. The attic is the upper part of a house where you might keep stuff, right? So if this is your house, there's the door, there's a window, and then you have this up here, there's your roof. This in here, all this space, that is the attic, right? So in here would be the attic because there's a lot of space to keep stuff, but you don't really wanna live up there. And so we had this chest in the attic. In the chest, I found this hat and this cutlass. And also, a cutlass is a kind of sword, right? A pirate sword. This is a cutlass. And also, and then Tintin gets excited. I know, treasure or a treasure map. And then he responds, no, not treasure. I didn't find treasure, but something like it. Old manuscripts by Sir Francis Haddock. Look, I started reading them yesterday evening, yesterday evening, and I read all night. So he was up all night reading. He was reading the book all night. They're manuscripts, and so they were written by him. This actually comes from the word, manu is like hand, writing, mano in Spanish is hand, and script is writing, escribir, if you speak Spanish. And so that's where this word comes from, and it's when something is written down in a book, typically by hand. That's not necessarily true nowadays, the meaning has changed, but that means that this has lots of information from this guy, from Sir Francis Haddock. And it says, the journal of Sir Francis Haddock, captain of the King's Navy, commander of the vessel Unicorn. Aha. So it is called the Unicorn. And the journal means that he wrote his life, his story in there. And he was a captain in the Navy. and commanded the unicorn. The vessel is a word for ship. And we might've talked about that. Captain is somebody who controls the ship. They're in charge. Do this, do this, do that. They're giving the orders. And the Navy, the Navy is the ships that are controlled by the government or a country. So for example, England or Spain had a Navy and they go on the water and there are a bunch of ships and it's like an army, but in the water. And so then we keep going, he says, I was still reading that when you came in. That's why you found me a little overexcited. But what a story, just listen to it. He was a little overexcited because he ran out and was shrieking at them. Avast, you dogs! Right? A little overexcited. Because he was still reading. He was reading really heavily. He was very invested. He's like, I want to keep reading. I want to keep reading. But he says it's a good story. And then he wants to tell it to Tintin. Just listen to it. It is the year 1676. The unicorn, a valiant ship of King Charles II, has left Barbados in the West Indies and set sail for home. She carries a cargo of, well, anyway, there's a good deal of rum aboard. cargo and then this is probably rum right he's drinking something rum is like I said that the beverage the alcoholic beverage that it has on board cargo is the stuff that a boat or a ship or a A bus, anything can carry cargo, but it's goods, it's stuff, right? So liquor, food, sugar, anything can be cargo, right? It's what you're carrying to deliver. To set sail is to leave, because when you have your sail, right, this is the sail of a boat. So here's the boat, this is the sail, what catches the wind. It pushes it along. When you set the sail, it means you pull it up and you get it going and then you go. It's called setting sail. A valiantship is the last word here, which means it's very brave. They were doing something very brave. It is the year 1676, and the unicorn, a Valiant ship of King Charles II, has left Barbados in the West Indies, that's just where it is, and set sail for home, for England, right, King Charles. And he carried a, she carries a cargo. Oh, she refers to a boat, not a person. The unicorn is a she. It's very common in English to refer to boats, cars, but any vehicle really as a she, as a woman. She carries a cargo of, well, anyway, he doesn't wanna say, but he just says, there's a lot of rum aboard on the ship. That's the end of this page. And then, oh, here we have a picture. This is the unicorn, the beautiful unicorn set sail. Here's the sails, right? We actually see there's, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 sales? Maybe there's 10 different sales? That's a lot of sales. Some other boat words that you might wanna learn, this is a flag, pretty easy. Flag, but then this is the hull, if you ever see this word. Hull of the ship, it's sort of like, this is a body, right? This is the hull. We might see portholes, right? Those are the little windows on a boat. There's a lot of boat-specific words. Everything has a name, right? I think this is like the stern. There's a lot of words here. This side is called port. This side is called starboard. Starboard. There we go. There's a lot of names specific to boats. Don't worry about memorizing them. I'll make sure that they're clear. And so we know that there is cargo on board below, down in here, and it has set sail for home to England. There we go. So two days at sea, a good stiff breeze, and the unicorn is reaching the starboard tack. There we go. So reaching on the starboard tack. So that's the right side, right? Port has the same number of letters as left. L-E-F-T-P-O-R-T. They're the same. Starboard and right don't, but that's the other side. So the right side, the starboard tack, that's just the direction the boat is facing because boats actually travel like this. They go boof, boof, boof, boof, and they call that tacking. So the starboard tack means that they're like this. I think it's correct on the video. It might be reversed. Which is annoying. This is my left hand, so that you know. If it looks like my right hand, it is not. This is my left hand. Anyway. So they're reaching on the starboard tack. Suddenly, there's a hail aloft. Set sail on the port bow! Somebody yells. He hails from aloft. These are very fancy words. You don't need to know them. Don't worry. I'll try to tell the story. Sail on the port bow. He sees a sail over here. So he sees a little sail down here of a boat off to the left side. And then Captain Haddock says, thundering typhoons. She's mighty close hold. That means she's going fast, right? She's going very quickly. Ration my rum if she's not going to cut across our bows. He's worried that she's going to cut them off and come to them, come attack them. Ration my rum is just a thing that he says, sort of like thundering typhoons or I'll be damned if. Something like that. And then, yeah, there it is. There's the sail off the starboard, off the port tack? No, port bow, that's what it is. And she's making a spanking pace. Spanking is when you hit somebody on the bum, right? But it means she's going fast. Pace is speed. That's a good word. She's making a spanking pace. Oh, she's running up her colors. Now we'll see. The colors is the flag, right, to show who you belong to, right? So you see here is the British flag back there, and those are their colors, right? And so if a ship is flying the colors of the pirates, that's not a good sign. Oh no, they're pirates. That's the Jolly Roger, right? That's what the name of the flag is, the Jolly Roger. It's the Jolly Roger, they're pirates. Ahoy there, clear the decks for action. Man the poop, stand by to haul to the wind. So here's some words, right? Clear the decks for action, get everything away, we're gonna fight. Right? Man, the poop. The poop deck is, I believe, back on this side. And it is just a part of the ship. It has nothing to do with actual poop. And he says, stand by to haul to the wind. Right? They want to have more control. They're going to haul towards the wind. And then he says, turning on to the wind with all sails set, risking her masts. because she's risking the masts. The mast, remember, is this part that stands up here, one, two, three masts, because if you go directly into the wind, right, so the wind is coming right at you, like if the wind is coming directly this direction, it can snap the mast, or if it's pushing too much, or even the other way, right, you can have too much wind and It snaps the mast. And so they're risking her masts. But the unicorn tries to out sail the dreaded barbary buccaneers. That's these pirates. They're trying to chase them. They want to steal from them. Thundering typhoons. It's no use. It's not working. She's overhauling us fast. She's catching up. Catching up. Jeez, I can't write. She's catching up so fast. Oh no. So they have to outwit the pirates. They have to be smarter than the pirates. So the captain makes a brave and daring plan. He'll wear ship, then pay off on the port tack. I don't know what that means, honestly. He'll wear ship and then pay off on the port tack? Then maybe it means turn around, I think, something like that. I don't know. As the unicorn comes abreast of the pirate, he'll loose off a broadside. No sooner said than done. So I think what he wants to do is come alongside the pirate like this and shoot, because they have cannons, right? They're gonna go and shoot a cannonball right into the other ship. And so he says, ready about, let go braces, beat gunners to corners. A lot more of ship terms, but it's exciting. Pretend you're excited. And then the unicorn has jibbed completely round. Taken by surprise, the pirates have no time to alter their course. The royal ship bears down upon them. Steady, steady. Let's look at some words here. Jibbed is another word like for one of the sails. And so they turned around. They jibbed successfully. It worked. They completely turned around. And so the pirates go, they turned around. We can't also turn around and move our ship. It's too big. And so the Royal ship is coming at them. It's bearing down. So they're going steady and they prepare the cannon here. This is the cannon. And these are the, what do they call them? Gunners. The gunners are getting ready to fire. However, we're gonna have to figure out what happens with the rest of this battle in the next episode. I hope that you enjoyed this one. We're going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Make sure to subscribe to the channel so that you see the next episode when it comes out, and let me know down below how it went. Remember, all the transcripts are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time, bye.
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