Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn #8
Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn
Episode 8
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. If you need, there are subtitles available, or you can see the entire transcript on benslanguagelab.com. This video is meant for English beginners. Your job right now is just to listen, watch, and enjoy. And make sure you subscribe for more videos like this one. Right now, we're 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. So if you remember from last time, we're on the boat and Tintin and Red Rackham are fighting. Ching, ching. They're fighting with their swords and the powder, the gunpowder is going to explode. We have to see what happens. They keep fighting. Ching, ching, ching. And he says, retreat as you may. You cannot escape me. You can't run away, even if you try. Retreat as you may. As you may is sort of as you try, or if you try to do this thing, you will not. It's a pretty old way of saying it. But retreat as you may. You cannot escape me. I'll run you through, prattling porpoise. To prattle is to like talk a lot. And then a porpoise is an animal. He'll, I'll run you through. It's when you stab somebody, right? If this is a person, you run them through with a sword. I'll run you through, you prattling porpoise. As the fuse runs down slowly, As, and as he fought, Sir Francis kept thinking of that fuse. Tsss. or something like that, a smoke alarm, smoke will set it off. Right? Or in this case, it's going to set off the explosion. And as he was fighting, as he fought, he was thinking of the fuse because it was going to explode at any moment. Suddenly, nimbly parrying a thrust, he leapt to one side. Nimbly is when you do something very quickly, nimble. A cat is very nimble because they're very light and they're quick and they can dodge things and move and jump around. And then here's some sword fighting words. To parry is to block something, right? So when you parry something, like somebody's attacking you with a sword and you block it, right? That's a parry. And then the thrust is to thrust the sword at them like this. Hi-ya! Right? That's a thrust. He leapt to one side. Ooh, and he jumped and he landed on poor Snowy's tail. Whoa, whoa! Ouchie, that hurts. With one swift blow from his heel, he extinguished the fuse. So we had a one swift blow with his heel. So this is his heel down here, this back part of your foot. This is my hand, but if this is a foot, your heel's back here. This is the ball of your foot, and this is the heel of your foot. So his heel went, boom, right down onto Snowy's tail. Now, Red Rackham, my temper's rising. He's getting angry. His temper is his anger, right? Your temper is how angry you are. Somebody who does not get angry is very mild-tempered. They don't have a temper. But somebody that gets angry very easily has a temper. And now it's going up. His temper is rising. This is all fighting and we see the bottle flying into the air and he's swinging the sword. And Snowy is running out of the way because we don't want this to happen again. No! That was too hard! Bang! Thump! Zing! Crack! Victory! Red Rackham lies dead with a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. And so he's saying that he's won, victory, I have won, I am victorious. Because Red Rackham lies dead. He's lying on the ground. And then, this is again from like a boat song with a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, is what he says. With a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. Again, doesn't really make sense, but that's what you might say if you're a pirate. And so here we see Red Rackham lying dead. That's that. May heaven forgive your wicked soul. Heaven is where you might go after you die. That's what people believe. And so he's saying, well, I hope that heaven forgives you. To forgive someone is to say, I forgive you. It's okay. I don't mind what you did because he had a wicked soul. He was evil. He killed people. He took from them. And so he says, I hope that heaven forgives your wicked soul. Enough delay. Now to light another fuse and I'll be off. No more waiting around delay is when you wait for something and it takes a long time, right? So if you go or somebody smacks oh That's a delay, right? Oh a delay there But so no no more delay. We have to light another fuse. He's lighting the fuse here And it starts to go in be off and he runs away I will be off that's I'm going away and No one has seen me. They're still drinking. Remember, they were having a party and drinking a lot. Quick, into the jolly boat. That's gonna be a boat to escape on, a small one to run away because no one saw him. No one has seen me. It's okay. They're still drinking. He's safe. So he's going to the lifeboat, we'd call it now the Jolly Boat, that's this, and here we see him climbing down this rope at night. He's on the back of the ship here, and he's going to climb down the rope, down here, and into this boat. Just look at the Jolly Boat. It's going away. Nonsense. You're seeing things. You're drunk. Of course, there's not seeing things. The boat is going away. As he rows and rows the boat away, and kaboom! It all explodes. Hurrah! Justice is done! He's now excited because they had taken everything and killed his crew. And so he's celebrating. Hurrah! And then he runs into the beach and falls over. Justice, by the way, is when something is equalized. So what they did was very bad. What they did is very bad. They must be punished. And so he did something that's also very bad. And so it's equalized. Justice. And so you might think of court or going to see the judge is justice because somebody did something wrong and so they have to pay for it. And he says, so perished the unicorn, that stout ship commanded by Sir Francis Haddock, all of the pirates aboard her, not one escaped with his life. So to perish is to die. The unicorn, that's this boat, perished it died along with because it was very it was very stout it was very stout it was a good ship stout is something that's hard to break and hard to to destroy that stout ship commanded by Sir Francis Haddock and then all of the who that's him right he was he was the commander And then all of the pirates aboard her, not one escaped with his life. They all died. But then Tintin asks, what happened to Sir Francis after that? Now that he's on the island here, right? Here he is on the island. What happened next? It says, he made friends with the natives on the island and lived among them for two years. Then he was picked up by a ship, which carried him back home. There his journal ends, but now comes the strangest thing in the whole story. So the natives on the island are the people that live on the island. Native to somewhere is when somebody is from a place. and a lot of islands are quite small, and so they have a couple hundred or a couple thousand natives living on the island. And so he lived among them, he lived with them for two years, until another ship came by and picked him up. He was picked up by the ship and they took him back home. And that's where his journal ends. There's nothing else. No more information. But the strangest thing comes next. There's the most interesting part of the entire story. On the last page of the manuscript, there is a sort of will in which he bequeaths to each of his three sons a model built and rigged by himself, a model of the very ship he once blew up rather than leave her to the pirates. There's one funny detail. He tells his sons to move the mainmast slightly aft on each model. Thus, he concludes, the truth will out. So let's break this down. What happened here? So the manuscript, so his journal, what he wrote, there's a will. A will is when somebody dies, or before they die, they write a will on who they want to have their things. And so somebody might write a will. So he wrote, I want my three sons to have this boat, this boat, and this boat. It's when you tell after you're dead who gets your stuff, basically. And so he wrote a will in which he bequeaths. That's a fancy word to say give, really. It pretty much means exactly the same thing. It's just to give somebody something. It's a little fancier, I bequeath to you my boat, rather than I give you my boat. But it's the same thing. And remember, model is the small fake ship, right? So the little ship here is a model, because it's not real. It's not humongous. It's a little model. which was built and rigged by him. To rig a ship is to put the ropes together, right? So when you build something, you connect it and then you rig the little ropes to have the sails and everything on it to look more like a ship. It's called the rigging. Again, it's another boat word. And he rigged it and built it by himself, a model of the very ship that he once blew up, rather than leave to the pirates. When you leave something to somebody, you actually, it's when you bequeath it to them, when you give it to them, usually in some, not a way of like just giving it to somebody, it's if maybe you're moving or you're dead, or you decide to go away, you might leave somebody something. So maybe you live with a friend. You and your friend live in the same apartment. You live together. But you have to leave. You have to go back home, or you want to go to another country. But you can't take your bed with you, or you can't take a bunch of things, and so you leave them to your friend. And then he says that there's one funny detail. He tells his sons to move the main mast, so the big center one, aft, slightly backwards. He wants them to move the mast slightly backwards, and thus, the truth will out. So thus, and it's like, and then, and if you do that, this will happen, the truth will out. The truth will come out. We'll figure out the truth. That's it, Captain! Red Rackham's treasure will be ours! He realizes what happened. What do you mean? Why do you suppose Sir Francis told his sons to move the mainmast on each of the three ships? How should I know? Why would he say that? How should I know? He must have been a very particular, peculiar man. No, particular man, and wanted the ships to be perfect. In that case, why would he not have moved the masts himself? Why did he tell his sons to do that? Oh, in that case, he would have moved the masts himself. Those mean the same thing. But so he doesn't know why. Why would he do that? Maybe he wanted them to be more perfect. But then Tintin says then he would have done it. He would have moved the masks slightly, the masts slightly aft, of course. Why would he tell his sons to do it? Because if they had obeyed him, if they'd listened to his words, if they had listened to what he said, they would have found a tiny scroll of parchment inside each mast. Remember, when the mast broke, On Tintin's ship, there was something inside. They found a little tiny scroll. And if they had listened to him, they'd obeyed him, that's when you listen to what somebody tells you to do, they would have found them. So what's that? How do you know? Because I myself found the parchment hidden in the ship I bought in the old street market. Here it is. And so now Tintin's saying that that's why he knows. He found one. He knows what it is. But then he reaches for it. My wallet. Someone's stolen my wallet. Stolen it? You've probably left it at home. Because he doesn't have his wallet anymore. They've taken it. No, it's been stolen. It was taken in the bus on my way here. I remember being jostled. When you're jostled is when somebody kind of bumps up against you and you get moved over, you get jostled around. And so he knows it's been stolen. He was on the bus and he was taking the bus and he was jostled by somebody who stole his wallet. What was on the parchment, he asks, because he wants to know. He says, oh, do you remember? Do you have it in your mind? And then Tintin says, wait, yes. Three brothers joined. That's the three sons. Three vnicorns in company, sailing in the noonday sun, will speak. That means we must get the three ships to deliver their secrets. The three parchments the rest isn't so easy. So he's trying to remember what was on that piece of paper and it starts with the three brothers joined three unicorns in company sailing in the noonday sun will speak and the rest is hard to remember the rest isn't so easy because it was Fortis from light that light will dawn, and then shines forth, and then some numbers, and then at the end, a little cross that follows the words, the eagles, and that's all. But what can it mean? I wonder what it means, asks Captain Haddock. I don't know yet, says Tintin, but I'm sure that if we can collect the three scrolls together, then we shall find Red Rackham's diamonds. I already know where the second one is. He's already found the second boat. Ivan has it, the collector. You know where the second scroll is? Yes, I know who's got the second unicorn. However, we're going to have to figure out what happens next in the next episode. They're going to have to go find the rest of the scrolls. But we're going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and comment down below with how it went. And remember, transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye.
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