Three men in a boat / Трое в лодке, не считая собаки. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Джером Клапка Джером

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СКАЧАТЬ must have been living on strawberries and cream for years. Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either – seemed discontented like.

      At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of that two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things and went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mixed with fried fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the steward came up with an oily smile, and said:

      “What can I get you, sir?”

      “Get me out of this,” was the faint reply.

      And they helped him to get upstairs, and left him. For the next four days he lived a simple life on thin captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he felt better, and went in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away he gazed after it regretfully.

      “There she goes,” he said, “there she goes, with two pounds’ worth of food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven’t had.” He said that if they had given him another day he thought he could have put it right11.

      So I was against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my own account. But I was afraid for George. George said he should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would advise Harris and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill. Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people managed to get sick at sea – said he thought people must do it on purpose – said he had often wished to be, but had never been able. Then he told us the anecdote of how he had gone across the Channel when it was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their berths, and he and the captain were the only two people on board who were not ill.

      It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick – on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people12 very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.

      If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I could account for the seeming mystery easily enough. It was just off Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try and save him.

      “Hi! come further in,” I said, shaking him by the shoulder. “You’ll be overboard.”

      “Oh my! I wish I was,” was the only answer I could get; and there I had to leave him.

      Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel, talking about his voyages, and explaining, with enthusiasm, how he loved the sea.

      “Good sailor!” he replied in answer to a young man’s envious question; “well, I did feel a little queer once, I confess. It was off Cape Horn. The vessel was wrecked the next morning.”

      I said:

      “Weren’t you a little shaky by Southend Pier one day, and wanted to be thrown overboard?”

      “Southend Pier!” he replied, with a puzzled expression.

      “Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday three weeks.”

      “Oh, ah – yes,” he answered, brightening up; “I remember now. I did have a headache that afternoon. It was the food, you know. It was the most disgraceful food I ever tasted in a respectable boat. Did you have any?”

      For myself, I have discovered an excellent remedy against sea-sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centre of the deck, and, as the ship goes up and down, you move your body about, so as to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward, till the deck almost touches your nose;

      and when its back end gets up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; but you can’t balance yourself for a week.

      George said: “Let’s go up the river.”

      He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet, and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us sleep well.

      Harris and I both said it was a good idea of George’s. The only one who wasn’t inspired with the suggestion was Montmorency. He never did care for the river.

      “It’s all very well for you fellows,” he says; “you like it, but I don’t. There’s nothing for me to do. I don’t admire sceneries, and I don’t smoke. If I see a rat, you won’t stop; and if I go to sleep, you get fooling about with the boat, and let me fall overboard. If you ask me, I call the whole thing incredible foolishness.”

      We were three to one, however, and the decision was made13.

Exercises

      1. Read the chapter and mark the sentences T (true), F (false) or NI (no information).

      1. All the friends were feeling well.

      2. The only disease the narrator had not got as he believed was cholera.

      3. The narrator tried to examine himself.

      4. The doctor gave the narrator the prescription which he followed.

      5. The supper was not tasty.

      6. Harris objected to the sea trip strongly.

      7. One of the narrator’s friends paid two pounds five for his food in a sea trip and that was a waste of money.

      8. The narrator was against the sea trip because of a sea-sickness he had.

      9. People who are sea-sick always confirm it when they are on the shore.

      10. Montmorency wasn’t inspired by the idea to travel up the river.

      2. Learn the words from the text:

      extraordinary, leaflet, suffer, treatment, disease, complication, crawl, prescription, necessity, swallow, faint, fancy, reduction, odour, broth, gaze, puzzled, disgraceful, remedy, recollect.

      3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

      4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

      1. With me, it was my liver that was … of order.

      2. I sat and … it over.

      3. As a boy, the disease … ever left me for a day.

      4. We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to … … our diseases.

      5. Lunch was at one, and … … four courses.

      6. … the beef … the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either – seemed discontented like.

      7. Harris said that he … never … able to get sick at sea.

      8. I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel, … about СКАЧАТЬ