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

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style="font-size:15px;">      “Here! what are you up to21?” you call out.

      “What are you up to?” he objects; “let it go, can’t you?”

      “Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, you stupid fool!” you shout.

      “No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “let go your side!”

      “I tell you you’ve got it all wrong!” you roar, wishing that you could get at him; and you pull your ropes that all his pegs are out.

      “Ah, the idiot!” you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and your side goes away. You start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent falls down, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:

      “There you are! What did I tell you?”

      Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out22 the boat, and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know why the tent isn’t up yet.

      At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the things. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the methylated spirit stove23, and crowd round that.

      Rainwater is the chief component of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is extremely rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup. After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers, if taken in right quantity, and you go to bed.

      There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the sea – the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your chest. You wake up and realize that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or else fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help comes, however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and you are being suffocated.

      Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Being determined to sell your life expensively, you fight, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling, and at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off24, you see a half-dressed hooligan, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when you realize that it’s Jim.

      “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he says, recognizing you at the same moment.

      “Yes,” you answer, rubbing your eyes; “what’s happened?”

      “The tent’s blown down, I think,” he says. “Where’s Bill?”

      Then you both raise up your voices and shout for “Bill!” and the ground beneath you heaves, and the faint voice that you heard before replies from out the ruin:

      “Get off my head, can’t you?”

      And Bill struggles out in an aggressive mood – he believes that the whole thing has been done on purpose.

      In the morning you are all three speechless, having to catch severe colds at night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.

      We therefore decided that we would sleep out at fine nights and in hotel, or inn, like respectable people, when it was wet, or when we wanted a change.

      Montmorency greeted this compromise with much approval. He does not enjoy romantic loneliness. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-so-mething-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of old ladies and gentlemen.

      When first he came to live at my expense25, I never thought I should be able to get him to stop long26. I used to sit down and look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: “Oh, that dog will never live. He will be taken to the bright skies that is what will happen to him.” But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and an angry woman, who called me a murderer, had brought me a dead cat, then I began to think that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.

      Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all four of us, the only thing left to discuss27 was what we should take with us; and this we had begun to argue, when Harris said he’d had enough oratory for one night, and proposed that we should go out and have a smile28, saying that he had found a place, round by the square, where you could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking.

      George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he didn’t); and the debate was, by common agreement, postponed till the following night; and the assembly put on its hats and went out.

Exercises

      1. Read the chapter and choose the correct answer.

      1. The friends arranged to start

      a) next Sunday.

      b) next Saturday.

      с) next Monday.

      2. You can a) never ignore Harris.

      b) always inspire Harris.

      с) never inspire Harris.

      3. Harris always knows a place round the corner where

      a) you can get something to drink.

      b) you can get some nectar.

      с) to eat properly.

      4. Camping out in rainy weather is

      a) not pleasant.

      b) nice and pleasant.

      с) wet and damp.

      5. To fix a tent in rainy weather is

      a) difficult enough.

      b) easy enough.

      с) extremely difficult.

      6. The chief component of diet at supper is

      a) bread and butter.

      b) rainwater.

      с) soup.

      7. The friends decided to sleep out

      a)

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