Tintin in: Red Rackham's Treasure #6
Tintin in: Red Rackham's Treasure
Episode 6
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben, and welcome to Ben's Language Lab. Stories are one of the best methods to improving a language, and stories with pictures, like this one, 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 you subscribe to see more videos like this one. For now, your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. we're still reading Tintin and Red Rackham's Treasure. If you haven't seen the first, all of the other videos, or the other series that leads into this one, make sure that you watch them first by clicking the link in the description to start from the beginning. All right, let's start learning. So, last time we had just talked about a sextant and how they're going to measure where they are. And so Haddock is going into this room here and he grabs out, oh, there it is, that's a sextant. That is the machine, I guess it's kind of a machine, right? It's basically a calculator, a fancy calculator. And he's working with it and he says, that's it, let's go in and I'll work it out. So what he did is he took measurements, he measured things, and so they're going to go inside, so they're gonna go into this room here, and they're going to do the calculations, they're gonna work it out. So to work something out is to solve something. In this case, to figure out where they are in the world using the math. And so then he says, the figures given in the parchments were latitude 2038 by 42 North and longitude 7052 by 15 East or West. That's the wrong word. Here's our position now. It's the same latitude, longitude 71, 71 to 71 degrees. I forget how you say latitude and longitude. I think it's 20 degrees. So this would be 71 degrees to 29 West, something like that. It's very, very uncommon to say these days, but it's something like that. where I think, yeah, I think you say something degrees, because that's like the degree that you go or I don't know exactly. But anyways, he's saying where they are. And the figures, the numbers is what he's referring to. So the numbers that were on the parchment, so that from the last series, the numbers on the parchments were these ones. And right now they have the same latitude, right? So this is their latitude. but they have a different longitude, which is off by a couple degrees. And then he says, so we've already passed the right point and yet we saw nothing. I simply can't understand it, he says. And so he realized that they went too far. They passed the point, right? So if they're coming from over here, going this direction, Here they are, here's where the thing says they should be, right here. They've gone all the way past it, and they're on this other side of it. So they've already passed it, but they didn't see anything. And he's looking, looking, and then Tintin says, Captain, I think I've got it. He grabs the paper, thinking, and he gets it, the idea. What do you mean? Well, the meridian from which you calculated the degrees of longitude was, of course, the Greenwich meat meridian. So this is going to be a little bit seafaringly complicated. But the meridian is something like what to do with the sun and where the middle point is. And Greenwich is, which is spelled Greenwich, Greenwich is a part of the UK that measures center of the Earth. If you ever heard of Greenwich Mean Time or GMT, that is the zero time. So I live in GMT minus seven, I think, or minus six. I don't actually know. My time zone is behind, yeah, behind London, behind Greenwich. Asia, for example, Japan is way ahead of London, so I'm doing a globe here, so I'm behind. Japan is ahead, because we're a spinning globe. And the meridian, I believe, is the zero point, so that section on the Earth that is zero. My thing just crashed again. This is ridiculous. Whatever. And so he's saying that they made a mistake in the fact that they were calculating from the wrong meridian. This is not a mistake that would really happen for you or me, but maybe for them. And then he says, you don't suppose I used the one in Timbuktu, he says, which is another place. But then Tintin says, no, wait, supposing Sir Francis Haddock used a French chart, he easily could have done. Then zero would be on the Paris meridian, and that lies more than two degrees east of Greenwich. So basically he's saying that they're calculating from the wrong zero point, right? And so instead of calculating from London, they should have been calculating from Paris. Blistering barnacles, that's an idea. You may be right. Perhaps we are too far to the West. We'll go back on our tracks. So he's saying that Tintin's probably right. They're probably calculating from the wrong point. And so they're going to turn around and go back on their tracks. And so your tracks are where you've been, right? They just usually talk about physical, like where your feet go on the ground to make tracks, right? On the ground, you can see where your footprint is, but this time they're talking more figuratively. We'll go back on our tracks. We'll go back that way. I do quickly wanna say something that's really helpful for remembering the directions. Geez, come on. So we have north, south. That's usually pretty easy because north is always known to be upwards, right? Up on a map. So if you think of a map, it's always up. We talk about the North Star, North, North, North, North is very common. But then, how do you know which one is East and West? Well, if you write out the two initial letters, it spells WE. So just remember that it's WE and not EWWW. It's not East-West, it's West and then East. West and then, oh, you can't see that. You can see it, there we go. So that's how you remember the compass order in English, is you can just think about how it spells the word we. How nice. Anyways, let's see what happens with Tintin and Haddock. Next page. And so he's thinking, cockswaying at the wheel, homeward at port, midships, steer to east. He's yelling out things to start turning around and getting the ship going. Again, words you don't really need to know. And then we see Professor Calculus out here on the water. He has his binoculars and he's looking around and he goes, what's that? And he sees something or notices something. So then he's walking over there and says, Captain, what is happening? We seem to be turning back. Yes, Professor Calculus, we're turning back. Oh, that's all right then. I was afraid we were turning back. Again, he's very deaf. He doesn't hear anything, but he doesn't admit it. How easily it is to be mistaken. I'd have sworn we turned back because they turned back round and are going back the other way. And of course Haddock is annoyed by this, right? He just doesn't listen to anything. You can't hear anything. And so the next evening, so we go forward another day as they've been sailing, sailing, there it is at last, our treasure island. We see off in the distance, off far, far in the distance is the island. And the island has treasure. And so it's their treasure island. And of course, Professor Calculus is still looking in the wrong direction. He's looking backwards while they're looking forwards, this direction over here. And there we go, there's the island. We see Tintin and Haddock over here on the side. They've got some binoculars and are looking out on this pretty big island. We see a couple of mountains. Here's some mountains here. There's some gray clouds up there. These clouds look like they're gray. There's the beach. Here's the beach on the island. And then we have a bunch of trees and vegetation. Lots of green and trees. And so they're probably going to go close, right? We'll see. It's too late to go ashore tonight. We'll drop anchor and tomorrow we'll explore the island, he says. So this is the shore, and so to go ashore is when you go onto land, right? So we're saying that it's too late tonight, it's gonna be dark, we're gonna wanna sleep, right? So tomorrow, we're gonna drop the anchor. Remember, the anchor is this thing on the boat, which is very heavy and makes sure they don't move. So we're gonna drop the anchor, and then they're going to explore tomorrow. Right, says Tintin. So, now it's the next morning, and we see they're going in on a little rowboat. Right, so the rowboat is smaller. This is the main boat, this is the Sirius, but they wanna go on a small boat so that they can get in easily, go quickly, and that sort of thing. And so then they get off here, we see that Haddock has his shoes in his hands, and he has a rifle. He's got a gun, he has a rifle. And then he says, hold the boat up to the beach. I'm going to... The newer word that we would use is reconnaissance. But this is like an old French version when English was more influenced by French. Because remember this book is from like the 1940s. Let's see. Tintin and Red Rackham's treasure. Red Rackham's treasure year. Let's see. This book is from 1943 was in French and the English translation was in 1959 it looks like. Um, yeah, so this, this book was translated in 1959. So that's 40, 64 years ago. This is 64 years ago. And so English has changed, right? You've noticed in this whole series that I often translate this English to become more modern. And so this word, I've never seen this version of the word, but we do have reconnaissance or recon is actually the even more common name for it now. Recon is when you're gonna go look for stuff, basically. He's gonna go see what there is. He's gonna go look for stuff and make sure that nothing is dangerous and that sort of thing. And we would say to do some recon. So you might say, hold the boat up to the beach, I'm gonna do some recon. Right? So they're getting onto the island and we'll see what happens next then, right? So he's going up onto the island and they're bringing up the boat, hauling it, they're dragging the boat, they're really hauling it. And then we hear, Some sounds like a shot right from the gun of some kind right and that startles them all What happened and then contingent goes crumbs? What's happened to him? And then he goes up and captain. What was it? Are you hurt and he goes up to him and then he says no I stubbed my toe against that thing and fell over that's how the gun went off and we see here's the thing on the ground right and so to stub your toe so you see his he's holding his foot right um so your toe is the big the big toe right um well actually he didn't say that um but So your toes are on your feet, and when you stub them, it's when you really hit them hard against something, and it hurts. I'm sure that you've stubbed your toe, which is like, oh! It's not fun. But that's what happened. He kicked this thing. He kicked it and went. Oh, and then the, he fell down and the gun went bang. Um, and that's how the gun went off. And then we hear from behind, Oh, and we turn around and he says, keep calm, keep calm. Yeah. And he's got a crab holding him by the toe, right? The crab came in and. grabbed him with his claw, with his pincer, right on the toe, and he's gripping hard, and the Thompson goes, yow! And the other one says, here, I got him. I'll hit him with my cane. But then, of course, he hits his brother right in the toes, which makes him go, yow! Even more. And then, of course, the crab is now attacking the other one, grabs him by the toe as the other one jumps away, holding his foot, shrieking, yo! And then Tintin says, oh no, then Haddock says, oh, leave them. Come and help me dig up this piece of wood. It intrigues me. So saying, forget about them. Leave them, they're fine. They're just gonna keep yelling. So come and help me with this piece of wood. It's interesting. It intrigues me. Why is there a piece of wood buried in the sand? And that's this. And so they're digging it out. They're digging out the piece of wood. They want to see what it is. I want to see what it is. I want to know. And then they're coming over with their toes hurting, their shoes off. Hello, what have they found, they say. And then he says, these are the remnants of the jolly boat in which Sir Francis Haddock once came ashore on this island, he says. And so it's a boat. They found an old boat. It's the remains of the boat. So the boat is old and broken and destroyed. And so it doesn't really have much left. And so what is left is called the remains, the stuff that remains. I don't really know what a jolly boat is, but it must be like this sort of smaller row boat that they used to get from the big boat onto the island. Because it's the jolly boat in which Sir Francis Haddock once came ashore on this island. This certainly proves that we're nearing our goal. Red Rockham's treasure is out there at the bottom of the sea. But now, shoes on everyone. Let's carry on. And so, now they're going to keep going into the island. They're going to carry on. They're going to continue. And so he says, put on your shoes, be careful, but this is a good sign, this is good news. It proves that we're getting closer to our goal. The treasure must be there at the bottom of the sea because we found the boat, right? The boat is a sign that we're getting closer. And so, here they are in the jungle, and they're going through, they're walking, let's see, can I get this all on screen? And we see them, here's the big tree, here's one of the Thompson's, here's the other one, and they're walking through the forest, through the jungle, really, it's more of a jungle, on the island. And then we hear, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's Snowy, he ran on ahead. And so Snowy comes back and he's got a big old bone. How nice. Dogs love bones. He's got a big bone in his mouth. He's barking. And they come back and they both go, huh? Where did you get that bone from Snowy? Here, show us where you found it. As Tintin's curious, where did he find a big bone like that? Show us where you found it, right? So, let's see where Snowy found the bone, huh? That's kind of interesting. So they're going back through, they're going through the forest and, oh my. Skulls these are skulls of people right? These are human skeletons So this must be a human bone of some kind maybe a leg or something like that and then We see Tintin and Haddock get closer and he says blistering barnacles I bet these are the remains of the pirates who that of the killed when the unicorn blew up and So he's thinking that it must be the pirates because the unicorn blew up and then the bones came ashore. Then he says, they can't be, Captain. If they were, we'd have found them on the shore. No, look at this spear. So he finds a spear. A spear is a weapon to attack with, a big spear that you can throw or stab with. So this thing here is a spear. Here's the shaft, here's the, The spearhead and you can stab with it or whatever so no look at this spear It's more likely that there were natives killed enough in a fight or probably eaten on the spot by their enemies And so yeah get back here So natives are people that originally live somewhere, or really kind of anywhere. So a native something is somebody that is from there, that is that thing. And so in the case of an island, the natives are the people that live there before settlers or Colonizers or any of the anybody that comes to the island they are not natives these people might have been and so they said they might have been killed in a fight or and potentially eaten by their enemies if their enemies were Are there animals or cannibals or something like that? And then he says, eaten? Do you mean cannibals live on this island? Maneaters? And so a cannibal is somebody that eats its own kind. So in the case of humans, if a human eats another human, that's cannibalism. It is not good. Most humans or most creatures do not do cannibalism. It is not a very good thing. And he says, that's what we're going to find out. However, we're gonna have to figure out if they come across cannibals in another episode, because that's all that we are going to do for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Make sure that you've subscribed to the channel and comment down below with how it went. And remember, if you need, there are transcripts for all episodes on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye.
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