A Child's History of England.15

And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the great fleet, near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, and striking their lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into rivers, in token of [作为……的标志] their making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the black November night when the Danes were murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts; and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on this war: burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries; killing the labourers in the fields; preventing the seed from being sown in the ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found rich towns. To crown [make sth "perfect" or complete] this misery, English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a storm occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English navy.

六级/考研单词: fleet, token, invade, feast, curse, rejoice, sword, entertain, march, barn, mill, sow, famine, starve, heap, ruin, ash, miserable, pirate, navy

《烈火金钢》是刘流创作的小说。它描写了抗日民主根据地在遭到鬼子扫荡时，游击队在党的领导下与日伪军进行了殊死搏斗，并取得了最终胜利的英雄故事。

drunk a curse... drink a toast; drink a health to sb

There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was true to his country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against its Danish besiegers; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, 'I will not buy my life with money that must be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me what you please!' Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his release with gold wrung from the poor. At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at a drunken merry-making, had him brought into the feasting-hall. 'Now, bishop,' they said, 'we want gold!' He looked round on the crowd of angry faces; from the shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms to see him over the heads of others: and he knew that his time was come. 'I have no gold,' he said. 'Get it, bishop!' they all thundered. 'That, I have often told you I will not,' said he.

六级/考研单词: wretched, feeble, priest, tire, assemble, drunken, bishop, mount, thunder, seldom

狄大人真文豪也。wring和thunder用的真妙。有个笑话：说某大汉拧毛巾拧不干。一个小个子男人上来拧出n多水。问他是干啥的，他说我是IRS(Internal Revenue Service - the department of the US government that collects national taxes)的。thunder - 声如响雷。

They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood unmoved. Then, one man struck him; then, another; then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran to the same heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him; until one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck him dead with his battle-axe. [tomahawk: 印第安战斧]

If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noble archbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdue all England. So broken was the attachment [a feeling that you like/love sb/sth] of the English people, by this time, to their incapable King and their forlorn [专八单词] country which could not protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a deliverer [sb who rescues you from harm or danger. deliver - help sb escape from sth bad/evil]. London faithfully stood out, as long as the King was within its walls; but, when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then, all was over; and the King took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already given shelter to the King's wife, once the Flower of that country, and to her children.

六级/考研单词: curse, heap, fragment, rude, supper, bruise, batter, prolong, emulate, noble, rescue, sneak, refuge, shelter

emulate - do sth or behave in the same way as sb else, especially because you admire them
imitate - copy the way sb behaves, speaks, moves etc, esp in order to make people laugh
on/from all sides | on/from every side: 1. in or from every direction; 2. by or from a lot of people with different opinions
took refuge abroad... 不是aboard.

Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not quite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little more than a month after he had been proclaimed King of England, they generously sent to [send for? ask sb to come to you] Ethelred, to say that they would have him for their King again, 'if he would only govern them better than he had governed them before.' The Unready, instead of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At last, he followed, and the English declared him King. The Danes declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus, direful war began again, and lasted for three years, when the Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he did, in all his reign of eight and thirty years.

六级/考研单词: gradual, proclaim, generous, thereby, reign

Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Saxons, they said; they must have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed Ironside, because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to [start doing sth] (fight), and fought five battles - O unhappy England, what a fighting-ground it was! - and then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two should fight it out in single combat. If Canute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes, but, being the little man, he decidedly [in a way that shows that you are very sure about a decision] said no. However, he declared that he was willing to divide the kingdom - to take all that lay north of Watling Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became sole King of England; for Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think that he was killed, and killed by Canute's orders. No one knows.

六级/考研单词: surname, combat, probable, militant, weary, gradual
Not over the Saxons... Saxons打死也不干。not over my dead body

楚汉之争，又名楚汉战争、楚汉争霸、楚汉相争、楚汉之战等，为汉元年（公元前206年）八月至汉五年十二月（公元前202年1月），西楚霸王项羽与汉王刘邦两大集团为争夺政权而进行的一场大规模战争。