Tintin in: Red Rackham's Treasure #8
Tintin in: Red Rackham's Treasure
Episode 8
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben. Welcome to Ben's Language Lab. Stories are one of the best methods to improve in a language, and stories with pictures are even better. And so today, we're going to be reading 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 to the channel for more videos like this one. Your job now is to watch, listen, and enjoy. We're still reading Tintin and Red Rackham's Treasure, which is the second book in a series starting with The Secret of the Unicorn. If you haven't seen the other series or the other episodes in this series, click the links in the description to watch from the beginning. All right, let's get learning. So last time, the Thompsons were trying to scare the monkeys because the monkeys had stolen Tintin's gun. So let's see what happens. I am not expecting anything good to happen. Of course, we see the monkeys have the gun and they're looking at them, pretending to shoot at them. Bang, bang. And so one of them grabs the gun and pulls the trigger. This is the trigger, the part that you pull back on a gun to go to explode and bang. It fires a bullet right through Captain Haddock's hat and knocks it off. Thank God it wasn't his head. So the gun falls down, and he says, that's done it! They've dropped the gun! Look, here it comes! And so they drop the gun, it's falling down, down, down, boink, and then falls right on both of their heads. And then he says, and then Captain Haddock says, very smart, weren't you, huh? Look, another inch lower, and that would have been the end of Captain Haddock. And so rightly so, he's upset. They shot him right in the head, one inch lower, an inch is about this much, right? One inch lower would have hit him right in the head. Ooh, that's not a good way to go. So he's a little upset at these two dummies. Anyway, all's well that ends well. Shall we go back now, Captain? No, that's all right, that's tinted knocking. Anyway, all's well that ends well. Shall we go back now, Captain? We know the island is uninhabited. Good idea. Let's go. This is a good phrase. So first off, what he's saying is that there's nobody on the island. It's uninhabited. That means there's no people living there. Inhabitants are people that live somewhere. So it's uninhabited and it's empty. So they're going to go back to the boat. But he said all's well that ends well. And so this is a phrase that you might hear in English, and it means that if something ends okay, it's good. All's well. All is okay. Everything is okay. Things ended okay. And so the idea is that it was difficult, but it ended okay, so it's fine. He almost died, but he didn't die, so it's fine. And so you might say that if there's something that's difficult or takes a long time or has problems, but ends out okay, all's well that ends well. And so they're going back, walking back, he's got his gun, there's Snowy here, Haddock and the two Thompsons. Thundering typhoons, I just remembered, he says. The idol, are we going to leave it here? So remember the last episode, they found an idol, a statue of Sir Francis Haddock. And so he wants to go back and get it, right? He just remembered, oh right, the idol. Um, should we leave it there or should we take it with us? So we'll see what they do. Um, and so now here's the idol on the boat with them. So they went and got, they went back and got it. And so they're in the little rowboat, right? Rowing. That's called rowing. And so we have Haddock, the two Thompsons who are rowing, there's Tintin and Snowy in the back, and there's the giant idol. And then they're going back out to the Sirius out there. Ah, what pleasant visions haunt me as I gaze upon the sea. All the old romantic legends, all my dreams come back to me. So I think it might be singing or something like that, or thinking or whatever, but he's talking a little bit fancy, right? What pleasant visions, what lovely thoughts I have in my head as I gaze upon the sea. To gaze is to look, but like a little more calmly or to enjoy, right? So if there's a nice, a brilliant sunset, a very beautiful sunset outside, you might gaze out at the sunset as you're drinking something. It's not really looking, right? Looking, you're looking, seeing, but gazing is and old romantic legends, stories and things about pirates and whatnot. And all his dreams come back to me, right? This pleasant visions and thoughts and stuff and whatnot. And then Tintin says, look out a shark. As we see that, can it come in close to Haddock's hand? Ah! So he pulls it back and it jumps up at him and you see it's got its eye and here's its nose. It kind of snapped at him almost, right? Sharks are these creatures. Thundering typhoons, it almost had my hand off. So it almost took his hand and bit it off. and tore it away, right? So that was close. Look, there's another, and there, and there. Quick, the gun. I'll tell them. And so he grabs the gun. He says, quick, the gun. Right, there's more. One, two, three. These aren't numbers. One, two, three. Quick, the gun. I'll tell them a thing or two, the brute. And so what he's saying is that he's going to fight them. He's going to tell them a thing or two. And when you tell them something, it's sort of like giving them a talking to, or basically he wants to teach them a lesson. He wants to say, you can't eat me. I'll shoot you, or whatever. And he calls them brutes, you animals. They are animals. They're sharks. Then he shoots at one, and it goes, bing. And they all go, huh? Bing? And then he comes up, and it's Professor Calculus. Look, there he is. He's taken off his hat and said, good day, fellows. And they're all very surprised. Calculus? And then Tintin says, you know, Captain, I'm beginning to think Professor Calculus's machines may come in very handy for us. They're not sharks at all. They're his machines, his submarines, his sub Marines. And so we'll see what might happen with those, huh? So the next day, they're on the boat again. They have the sharks up on the boat. And it looks like Tintin is getting into one of the sharks. So here he is in the shark with Snowy, of course. Snowy's on the shark too. And Haddock says, you've made up your mind. Yes, Professor Calculus has explained exactly how his machine works. It'll be all right. So he's gonna go down under the water. Stop, just a minute, says Calculus. He comes up very quickly and telling Tingen to wait, stop. I forgot to tell you, when you locate the wreck, press the little red button on the left of the instrument panel. That releases a small canister attached to underneath the machine. It is full of a substance that gives off a thick smoke when it comes into contact with water. It'll show us where the shipwreck lies. The little red button, right. So let's break that down really quickly. So Tintin has a panel in front of him, like with buttons, right? So there's buttons here, there's like a lever that you can pull down, right? It's a control panel, and he has one red button. And when he presses that red button on the instrument panel, that will release a little canister. So a canister is sort of like a little thing full of something. And so in this case, it's full of a substance, so stuff, that will, when it touches water, it's going to make a lot of smoke. It's going to be very obvious. It's going to be very clear. So that way on the boat, they can go to where Tintin is, right? They can find Tintin cause he's going to be underwater. And so that's what he's going to do. Um, it says a little red button, right? No red, a little red button. You've got it. Good. Well, goodbye and good luck. He says, so now he's telling Tintin to go off, go underwater. So here we see Tintin in the water. There he is with Snowy, very low pixels. Tintin, Snowy in the shark submarine. And then there we go. There he goes, he's dived. This is sort of interesting. In the US, so where I'm from, the United States, we say dove. He dove. But in the UK, they often still say dived. But we use it to match like drive, right? Drive, drove. Dive, dove. So you might see some of those differences in grammar, actually, between the two different dialects, or between many different dialects. Lots of English dialects have different grammar than each other because that's how languages work. Anyway, there he goes. He's dived. He's dove. Although I would say he dove. He's under. So now we see them underwater. There's a fish. There's the shark. And then Tingent says, this is fun, huh, Snowy? Golly, what a lot of water. That's right, Snowy, there's a lot of water around, right? You're underwater. Impressive. And so now he's down close to the bottom of the sea. We see some, some sea anemones. These are called sea anemones. That's a good word. Anemone, anemone. Um, it's sort of like saying an enemy. Oh, that's not how you spell enemy. There you go. An enemy, but it's actually spelled very different. Maybe the subtitles will have it correct, I'm not sure, but it's like A-N-E-O something, something, something. It's a weird word. Then a bunch of fish. And then we see them talking on the boat. Let's hope nothing goes wrong. Gone long? Why, no, it's only been 10 minutes since he dove, says Professor Calculus. Again, he's deaf. He can't hear. And now they're going along, and there's a giant jellyfish, it looks like, and there's some kelp back here. This is seaweed or kelp of some kind. Let's see what happens next. What's happening under the water? So they're going along, there's these big seaweed kelp pieces, and then, hello, what's the matter? The engine stopped and we aren't moving anymore. So the engine, ow, I just bit my lip. That hurt. Ouch. The engine stopped going, he's stuck. Right? The engine stops. We aren't moving anymore. Huh? He's a little frightened. He's a little scared. Uh-oh. Things look bad, Snowy. Our propeller is tangled in the weeds. So their propeller, that's this thing in the back that spins around. So they often look sort of like this, right? I can't draw. But like it's propeller, propeller, propeller, propeller. There we go. They look like this and they go around and around and around and around and around and they push out water. They propel you forward. And so he's saying that the propeller is tangled in the weeds. That's all this back here. We'll try to free ourselves by going in reverse. So they're going to try to go backwards because that might help them get free of the weeds. So he tries. It's no good. The propeller is completely jammed and the engine has stalled. So it's totally jammed. It can't move, right? It's jammed. Um, the engine has stalled. The engine stalls when it basically stops running, right? Right. It stalls. Um, and you have to restart it. And then he says to snowy, well, snowy, my boy, how do we get out of this? Cause Tintin's trapped underwater in a shark submarine. Um, and he can't get out. So he says, well, there's only one thing we can do. We'll release the smoke canister, like that's the thing that has the stuff inside of it, and they'll at least know where we are. There, we press the little red button. So he presses the little red button, and the canister falls out onto the ground and starts to put out all this smoke so that they can find him and rescue him and save him, because he's stuck, he's trapped. That's it, he says. And so then on the surface of the water, we see all of the smoke now coming out of the water. Here's all the smoke. Look, look, smoke. He's found the wreck of the unicorn, says Haddock. There, Professor Calculus, smoke. He's found the wreck. He's pointing out into the water at the smoke that Tintin has set out and they think that he found the remains, the wreck of the unicorn, but he's actually just in trouble. So we keep going and he says, oh, Captain, look there. No, no, look over there. Smoke, he's found the wreck. Yeah, Calculus, we know. Oops. We know. So they're back underwater and Tintin says, patience, Snowy. It won't be long before someone comes to rescue us. So patience is the ability to wait. Wait, Snowy, it won't be long, somebody's gonna come rescue us. And so they're going along, they're gonna go rescue him, and he says, and Caddick says on the boat, ahoy there, lower the dinghy, we'll drop a buoy over the spot, Tintin has marked. So this is the dinghy, it's a rowboat, a dinghy, that's a good word, And a buoy is one of these things that you put in the water that just floats there, right? A buoy is, um, there to mark something, right? And so he's, they're going to put a buoy there so they can find it again. There's the buoy. And there's the underwater viewing instrument, he says, which looks to be like a long pole of some kind. And they're gonna stick it underwater so they can see, so they can look under the water. So it's called an underwater viewing instrument, I guess. And then we keep going and Haddock says, it worries me a bit that Tintin hasn't come up again. And then Calculus, of course, doesn't know what he's saying, so he responds totally randomly, no, but I was a great sportsman in my youth. What is he talking about? And that accounts for the athletic figure I still have, he says. And then Haddock is looking and says, hmm. And then to be quite honest, no, it was mostly walking. So he's just talking. He's talking, talking, talking. He's saying he was good at sports and that he's still very athletic, but it's actually mostly walking. He didn't really do any sports. But meanwhile, a haddock is taking the instrument and looking down into the water with the instrument. He's looking down into there so he can see what's underwater. Let's see, thundering typhoons. It's not a wreck, it's Tintin, he says. He's looking down to see what's going on. It's not a wreck, it's Tintin. But then Calculus says, wonderful, quick, let me look. Oh Columbus, the propeller has been fouled by weeds. Can we save him, he says. So fouled by weeds is just saying it's caught up in the weeds, right? That's what happened to Tintin. So the propeller has been caught by the weeds. How can we save him? Uh oh, we're going to have to figure out what happens next. Do they save Tintin? I don't know, but we'll see that in the next episode. We're going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Make sure that you subscribe to the channel and comment down below with how it went. What did you learn today? And remember, transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye.
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