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Module 3 Adventure in Literature and the Cinema The Steamboat There was a big storm after midnight and the rain poured down. We stayed inside the shelter we had built and let the raft sail down the river. Suddenly, by the light of the lightning, we saw something in the middle of the river. It looked like a house at first, but then we realized it was a steamboat. It had hit a rock and was half in and half out of the water. We were sailing straight towards it. "It looks as if it'll go under soon," Jim said, after a couple of minutes. "Let's go and take a look," I said. "I don't want to board a sinking ship," said Jim, but when I suggested that we might find something useful on the boat, he agreed to go. So we paddled over and climbed on to the steamboat, keeping as quiet as mice. To our astonishment, there was a light in one of the cabins. Then we heard someone shout, "Oh please boys, don't kill me! I won't tell anybody!" A man's angry voice answered, "You're lying. You said that last time. We're going to kill you." When he heard these words, Jim panicked and ran to the raft. But although I was frightened, I also felt very curious, so I put my head round the door. It was quite dark, but I could see a man lying on the floor, tied up with rope. There were two men standing over him. One was short, with a beard. The other was tall and had something in his hand that looked like a gun. 'I've had enough of you. I'm going to shoot you now," this man said. He was obviously the one who had threatened the man on the floor. And it was a gun he had in his hand. "No, don't do that," said the short man. "Let's leave him here. The steamboat will sink in a couple of hours and he'll go down with it." When he heard that, the frightened man on the floor started crying. "He sounds as if he's going to die of fright!" I thought. "I have to find a way to save him!" I crawled along the deck, found Jim, and told him what I had heard. "We must find their boat and take it away, then they'll have to stay here," I said. Jim looked terrified. "I'm not staying here," he said. But I persuaded him to help me, and we found the men's boat tied to the other side of the steamboat. We climbed quietly in and as we paddled away we heard the two men shouting. By then we were a safe distance away. But now I began to feel bad about what we had done. I didn't want all three men to die. Module 3 Adventure in literature and the cinema The steamboat 午夜之后有一场暴风雨倾盆而下。我们呆在我们搭建的遮蔽雨的木筏里，让木筏随着河水顺流而下。突然，通过闪电，我们看到什么东西在河的中央。最初看上去像一座房子，但是后来我们意识到它是一艘汽船。它闯到了礁石，一半露在外面一半浸没在水中。 “它看起来快要沉了”过了一会吉姆说道。 “让我们去看一看吧”我说到。 吉姆说：“我可不想上一座快要沉了的船”，但是当我提出我们可能在上面找到一些有用的东西时，他同意去了。于是我们就划船过去，爬上汽船并像老鼠一样安静。使我们惊讶的是，有一间船舱的灯亮着。之后我们听到有人在呼喊，“oh 请不要杀我！我不会告诉任何人！” 一个男人用生气的语气说道：“你在撒谎。你上一次也这样说。我们要杀了你。” 当吉姆听到这些话时，他很害怕并跑回木筏。我尽管也很害怕但是我也很好奇，所以我把我的头贴近门。天很黑，但是我能看到人被绳子捆着躺在地板上。有两个人围着他站着。一个很矮留着胡子。另一个是高个手里拿着什么东西看起来像抢。 这个男人说：“我受够你了，我现在就要枪毙你”。他显然在威胁躺在地上的那个人。一把枪握在他手里。 矮个的说：“别这样做，让他留在这，他和这个船再过几个小时就要沉了”。 当他听到这些，那个在地上被吓傻的人开始哭。“听起来，他就要被吓死了！”我想，“我要找一种方法去帮他”。 我沿着甲板爬行，找到吉姆并告诉他我听到的。“我们一定要找到这艘船并弄走船，这样他们就必须留在这里了”我说。 吉姆看起来很害怕，“我可不想呆在这”他说。但是我说服了他帮我，我们发现这些人的船拴在沉船的另一边。我们悄悄的爬上了小船，当我们划着小船离开那艘沉船时，我们听到了那两个人的吼叫声。但是那时我们离他们已经有一段安全的距离了。但是这时我开始后悔我做的一切了。我不想让三个人都死掉。 The Life of Mark Twain Often the lives of writers resemble the lives of the characters they create. Mark Twain, who wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was no exception. To start with, the author’s name, Mark Twain, is itself an invention, or “pen name”. Twain’s real name was Samuel Clemens. “Mark Twain”, which means “watermark two”, was a call used by sailors on the Mississippi to warn shipmates that they were coming into shallow water. Like Huck, Mark Twain led an adventurous life. He left school early, and as an adolescent, determined to make his fortune in South America, set off from his home in Hannibal, Missouri, for New Orleans. He wanted to take a boat to the Amazon, where he thought he could get rich quickly. He arrived in New Orleans without a penny in his pocket only to find that there were no boats for South America. Forced to change his plans, he worked for several years as a pilot on a steamboat, taking passengers up and down the Mississippi, the great river which flows from the north of the US near the Canadian border, down to the Gulf of Mexico. Later he became a journalist and began writing stories about life on the river. Twain’s vivid and often amusing descriptions of life on the river quickly became popular, and established the reputation he still enjoys today as one of America’s greatest writers. |
