2008星火30篇文章贯通考研词汇(1)

“Let’s walk out to the banner!”

To the banner? Oh, no. This was too much.

“I want to see the ABC!” said Tome. “Come on!” why was his voice so urgent? What did the want that ABC banner for?

“Tom, you are too bold,” I said. “You really have no concept…..” But he had set off. I was very scared, but somehow rose to the challenge and went with him. It became a contest: who would be the first one to touch the long banner? I was halfway along the arm when I heard the water of the reservoir, far underneath us. It was then that I remembered that the chief crane operator, before stopping his work for the day, would always swing the giant arm so that it projected out over the water. Now I was really scared. I held on to a rod. I could feel the coffee I had drunk could and undigested inside me. I did not have Tom’s ox-like constitution.

“Tom!” I said. I did not possess hi boldness, and not his urgency.

“You can’t quit now!” Said Tom. But I could not move. I was trapped.

Tom had reached the banner. He was a dark shape, loosening the knots that held the banner to the rods.

“I possess the ABC!” he said, in that precise English of his. The dark shape on the arm put a thumb up to show me that he had got what he wanted. He put his other hand on what he thought was a rod, but it was the wire that would shock him.

They said later that the nuts on the box that surrounded the wire were loose and had come unscrewed(螺丝钉旋松的). The box had fallen away, and the wire was exposed.

Tome never panicked. He looked at me as if I were far away. But his legs would not hold him up. Wrapped in the banner, he fell, like a baby bird from a nest. It was I who panicked, when I heard him hit and vanish underneath the water of the reservoir. Maybe his fall had not been fatal, but would my beloved Tom now drown? It was possible.

I began to cal for help.

We spent an anxious fortnight in the dormitory. While the others would talk about his vitality(生命力), I stared at jeans and socks of the vanishing nut. The dorm was a different place without his precise English. An X-ray scan had revealed that he would need an operation. And of course the big ox had to recover from the exposure to the cold water. There was a mention in the media of Tom’s shock and fall, and the TV guys were going to come and see what we were doing at the reservoir project, until their investigation was canceled. But the authorities did investigate our company. Their investigation revealed that the square gate had been left open, and the box surrounding the wire had come off.

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