Tom Sawyer – Part Twenty-eight

Before you read the text, read the following comprehension questions.

1. What was inside the ‘treasure house’?

2. Why was Tom surprised and confused when he opened the ‘treasure house’?

3. What came out of the Sandy hole?

4. Who did Tom blame for the failure of his ‘treasure house’ superstition?

5. What did Tom take out from under the branches behind the tree?

Now read the text and answer the questions.

Yes, it was settled; his career was now clear. He would run away from home and begin immediately. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together. He went to an old fallen tree that was close to him and began to dig under one end of it with his knife.

He soon hit wood that sounded hollow. He put his hand there and said the following:
"What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!"
Then he moved away the dirt with his knife, and exposed a pine cone. He picked it up and saw a little treasure house whose bottom and sides were made of wood. There was a marble inside.

Tom could hardly believe his eyes! He scratched his head in confusion, and said:
"Well, that beats anything!"
Then he threw the marble away violently, and stood there thinking for a while. The truth was that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his friends had always considered infallible.

If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it for two weeks, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, no matter how widely they had been separated.

But now, this thing had actually failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had often heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward.

He thought about this for a long time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the spell. He thought he would prove this point, so he looked around until he found a small sandy place with a little hole in it. He lay down, put his mouth close to the hole and called,
"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!"

The sand began to move, and soon a small black beetle appeared for a second and then disappeared again.

"He won’t tell! So it was a witch that did it. I knew it!"

He knew that it was useless to fight against witches, so he gave up. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and so he went to look for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself exactly where he had been standing when he threw the marble away. Then he took another marble from his pocket and threw it in the same way, saying:
"Brother, go find your brother!"Diccionario online

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far, so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within half a metre of each other.

All of a sudden, he heard the sound of a toy trumpet coming from another part of the forest. Tom quickly took off his jacket and trousers, moved some leaves and branches from behind a tree and revealed a home-made bow and arrow, a sword and a tin trumpet, and in a moment he had picked them up and ran away. He stopped under a huge tree, blew an answer on the trumpet, and then began to move slowly and carefully, looking all around him. He said quietly to an imaginary company:
“Wait, my merry men! Keep hidden until I give the signal."

... to be continued!

* The text has been adapted from the Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain


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Tom Sawyer – Part Twenty-nine

Before you read the text, read the following comprehension questions.
 

1. In their first combat, which character was Tom?

2. Which character was Joe?

3. Why did Tom refuse to fall and be killed?

4. Why did Tom (as Robin Hood) shoot an arrow?

5. What did the boys do with their weapons before they left the forest?
   

Now read the text and answer the questions.
 
Now Joe Harper appeared, as appropriately dressed and elaborately armed as Tom. Tom called out to him:

"Stop! Who comes into Sherwood Forest without my permission?"

"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's permission. Who are you who…….who…"

"Dares to use such language," said Tom, helping (they talked "by the book," and from memory).

"Who are you that dares to speak such language?"

"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as your dead body shall soon know."

"Then you are indeed that famous outlaw? I will definitely and most happily fight with you about passing through this fine forest. Get ready!"

They raised their swords, threw their other things on the ground, took a sword-fighting position, foot to foot, and began a serious, careful combat.

Tom soon said: "Now, if you've got the ability, put some energy into it!"

So they "fought even harder," panting and sweating with the work. After a while, Tom shouted:

"Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"

"I will not! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of it."

"That’s nonsense. I can't fall. That’s not the way it is in the book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he killed poor Guy of Guisborne.'

You're supposed to turn around and let me hit you in the back."

There was no avoiding the result, so Joe turned, received the hit and fell.

"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill YOU. That's fair."Diccionario online

"I can't do that”, said Tom. “It’s not in the book."

"Well, it’s not fair."

"Ok, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and I’ll fight with a long stick. Or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you can be Robin Hood for a little while and kill me."

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength away through his neglected wound.

And at last Joe, representing a large group of crying outlaws, dragged himself sadly forward, put his bow into his hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow falls, we will bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree."

Then he shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettle and jumped up again much too quickly for a dead man.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their weapons, and went off complaining that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.

They said they would rather be outlaws for a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.

... to be continued!

* The text has been adapted from the Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain


  Download the original book for free
 

*Consulta un PDF con la información y resumen de 100 libros en inglés
que puedes descargar en 1 único archivo.

 

  Haz click para comprobar las soluciones

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