The Road. Аудирование на 50000+ английских слов с текстовым сопровождением

I met that aged sailorman glad-eyed and beaming, with all the simulated relief at deliverance that a drowning man would display on finding a life-preserver in his last despairing clutch.

Here was a man who understood and who would verify my true story to the faces of those sleuth-hounds who did not understand, or, at least, such was what I endeavored to play-act. I seized upon him; I volleyed him with questions about himself. Before my judges I would prove the character of my savior before he saved me.

He was a kindly sailorman – an «easy mark.» The policemen grew impatient while I questioned him. At last one of them told me to shut up. I shut up; but while I remained shut up, I was busy creating, busy sketching the scenario of the next act. I had learned enough to go on with. He was a Frenchman. He had sailed always on French merchant vessels, with the one exception of a voyage on a «lime-juicer.» And last of all – blessed fact! – he had not been on the sea for twenty years.

The policeman urged him on to examine me.

«You called in at Rangoon?» he queried.

I nodded. «We put our third mate ashore there. Fever.»

If he had asked me what kind of fever, I should have answered, «Enteric,» though for the life of me I didn’t know what enteric was. But he didn’t ask me. Instead, his next question was:—

«And how is Rangoon?»

«All right. It rained a whole lot when we were there.»

«Did you get shore-leave?»

«Sure,» I answered.

«Do you remember the temple?»

«Which temple?» I parried.

«The big one, at the top of the stairway.»

If I remembered that temple, I knew I’d have to describe it. The gulf yawned for me.

I shook my head.

«You can see it from all over the harbor,» he informed me. «You don’t need shore-leave to see that temple.»

I never loathed a temple so in my life. But I fixed that particular temple at Rangoon.

«You can’t see it from the harbor,» I contradicted. «You can’t see it from the town. You can’t see it from the top of the stairway. Because – » I paused for the effect. «Because there isn’t any temple there.»

«But I saw it with my own eyes!» he cried.

«That was in – ?» I queried.

«Seventy-one.»

«It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1887,» I explained. «It was very old.»

There was a pause.