When they did manage to speak—both at once, for choice, in their eagerness to get their story out—here's about what their history came to, as we pieced it together, bit by bit, from the [pg 57] things they told us at different times. If I were one of those writing chaps, now, that know how to tell a whole ten years' history, end on end, exactly as it happened, without missing a detail, I'd get it all out for you just as Martin told us; or better still, I'd give it to you in a single connected piece, between inverted5 commas, as his own words, beginning, "I was born," said he, "in the city of Edinburgh," and so forth7, after the regular high-and-dry literary fashion. But how on earth those clever book-making fellows can ever remember a whole long speech, word for word, from beginning to end, I never could make out and never shall, neither. What memories they must have to do it, to be sure! It's my own belief they make it up more than half out of their own heads as they go along, and are perfectly8 happy if it only just sounds plausible9. But anyhow, Martin Luther Macglashin didn't tell us all his story at a single time, or in a connected way; he gave us a bit now and a bit again, with additions from Jack, [pg 58] according as he was able. So being, as I say, no more than a free-and-easy master mariner10 myself, without skill in literature, I'm not going to try to repeat it all, word for word, to you precisely11 as it came, but shall just take the liberty of spinning my yarn12 my own way and letting you have in short the gist13 and substance of what we gradually got out of our two fugitives14.
Well, it seems that Jack and Martin's father was, just as I suspected, a Scotch15 missionary16 on the Island of Tanaki. He lived there with another family of missionaries17 of the same sect18, in peace and quiet, as well as with an English merchant of the name of Williams, who traded with the natives for calico, knives, glass beads19 and tobacco. For a long time things had gone on pretty comfortably in the little settlement; though to be sure the natives did sometimes steal Mr. Macglashin's fowls20 or threaten to tie Mr. Williams to a cocoa-nut palm and take cock-shots at him with a Snider, out of pure lightness of heart, unless he gave them rum, square gin [pg 59] or brandy. Still, in spite of these playful little eccentricities21 of the good-humored Kanakas, who will have their joke, murder or no murder, all went as merrily as a wedding bell (as they say in novels) till suddenly one morning a French labor-vessel—I suspect the very one we had intercepted22 in the act of trying to carry off Nassaline—put into the harbor in search of "apprentices23."
She was a very bad lot, from what the boys told us; a genuine slaver of the worst type; and she stirred up a deal of mischief24 at Makilolo.
NATIVES OF THE ISLAND OF TANAKI. Page 58
On the shore the Chief of Tanaki was drawn25 up to receive them with all his warriors26, tastefully but inexpensively rigged out in a string of blue beads round the neck, an anklet of shells and a head-dress of a single large yellow feather.
"Who are you?" shouts the chief at the top of his voice. "You man a oui-oui?"
"Yes," the Frenchman shouts back in his pigeon-English. "Me de commander of dis [pg 60] French ship. Want to buy boys. Must sell them to us. Tanaki French island. Discovered by Bougainville."
"No, no," says the Chief in pigeon-English again. "Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Capitaney Cook find him long time back. My father little fellow then; him see Capitaney, him tell me often. Capitaney Cook no man a oui-oui; him fellow English."
The other natives joined in at once with their loud cry, "Chief speak true. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. If man a oui-oui want to take Tanaki, man a Tanaki come out and fight him." And they threw themselves at once into a threatening attitude.
"Have you got any Englishmen here?" the French skipper called out, to make sure of his ground.
"Yes," says the missionary—our boys' father—standing out from the crowd. "Three [pg 61] English families here. Settled on the island. And we deny that this group belongs to the French Republic."
At that the Frenchman pulled back a bit. When he saw there was likely to be opposition27, and that his proceedings28 were watched by three English families, he drew in his horns a little. He knew if he interfered29 too openly with the missionaries' proceedings, an English gunboat might come along, sooner or later, and overhaul31 him for fomenting32 discord33 on an island known to be under the British protectorate. So he only answered in French, "Well, we're peaceable traders, Monsieur. We don't want to interfere30 with the British Government. Consider us friends. All we desire is to hire laborers34." And he landed his boat's crew before the very face of Macglashin and the Tanaki warriors.
At first, as often happens in these islands, the natives were very little disposed to trade with the strangers in boys or women, for they were afraid of the Frenchmen; and Macglashin [pg 62] and the other missionary did all they knew to prevent the new comers from carrying off any of the islanders into practical slavery. But after awhile the Frenchmen produced their regulation bottles of square gin (that's what they call Hollands in the South Pacific), and began to treat the Chief and the other savages36 to drinks all round, as much as you liked, with nothing to pay for it. In a very short time the Chief had got so much liquor aboard that his legs wouldn't answer the rudder any longer, and he began to reel about like a perfect madman. Most of the other full-grown men natives followed suit before long, and lay down on the beach half dead with drunkenness. Perhaps the liquor was drugged; perhaps it wasn't; but anyhow, in spite of all the missionaries could do, the shore before nightfall was in a condition of the wildest and most bestial37 orgies. The men, in what the newspapers call "a high state of vinous exhilaration," were ready to sell their boys and girls, or anything else on earth for a little more gin; and as the missionaries [pg 63] were naturally helpless to prevent it, the Frenchman was soon driving a roaring trade in flesh and blood against the drunken savages.
The business-like way they went to work, Jack and Martin told us, was horribly disgusting. The women, indeed, they tried to wheedle38 and cajole—"You like go along a New Caledonia along a me? Only three yam times; then ship bring you back again. Very good feed; plenty nyam-nyam. Pay very good. Pay money. Lots of shop. You buy what you like: you buy red dress, red handkerchief, beads like-a-chiefie. No fight; no beat; no swear at you. You good girl; I good fellow master." But if they couldn't induce them, by fair words and promises and little presents of cheap French finery, to put their mark to their sham39 indentures40, then they just knocked them down with a blow on the head, dragged them by their hair to the boats hard by, and got their fathers or husbands to put their marks, and receive a few dollars and some red cloth in payment.
[pg 64] As for the boys, they handled them like so many animals in a market. "Turn round, cochon! Show me your faces! Mille tonnerres, let me see how you can run, you dirty young blackguard!" They examined them as a veterinary would examine a horse. "Why, there was our little fellow, Nangaree," Jack said to us with deep concern—"Nangaree, that used to clean up things for mother at the mission-house: his father sold him for twenty dollars. The captain looked at his legs, and at the glands41 in his throat, to see if he'd had the chicken-pox and the measles42. Then he said to his mate, 'This lot's cheap enough. He's a first-rate lad, and can speak English. He'll do for the hold. Bundle him along!' And the mate caught him up by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to the boats, kicking and screaming; and that was the last we saw of poor Nangaree!"
For three days and nights, it seems, this horrible inhuman43 market or slave-fair went on [pg 65] upon the beach, the Frenchmen taking care to keep the natives well primed with spirits all the time, till they'd got their hold full, and were prepared to sail away again with their living cargo44. Then at last they upped anchor, and out of the harbor. But before they went, the skipper, it appears, who was angry at the missionaries for having interfered with him, and was afraid they might report his proceedings to the British Government when next the mission ship came that way on her provisioning rounds, took aside the Chief in a confidential45 chat, and tried to inflame46 his mind, all mad drunk that he was, against the English residents. Apparently47 he had made so good a three days' work of it with his horrible trade, and found it so convenient to draw his supplies from this remote and almost unvisited island, that he thought it would be nice if before his next visit he could get rid altogether of these meddlesome48 strangers. He didn't want European witnesses to crop up against him in future; so he told the Chief, with [pg 66] a great show of confidence, that Macglashin and his friends were not English at all, but Scotch; and he pointed49 out that it was uncomfortable for the natives to be interfered with in their trading operations by a set of white-livered curs who objected to the selling of boys and girls into temporary slavery. Surely a Chief had a right to do as he would with his own subjects! What else he said, Heaven knows, but this is what happened as soon as the French, with their horrid50 cargo, had got well clear of the unhappy island.
That very afternoon, the Chief, beginning to get sober again, but quarrelsome from headache and the other after-effects of a long debauch51, came round to the mission-house in a towering rage, and asked the unsuspecting missionary, "Say, white man, are you a Scotchman?"
"Yes," says Macglashin, not knowing what was coming. "I'm a Scotchman, Chief, certainly. I was born in Scotland."
[pg 67] The Chief laughed loud. "Ha, ha," he said, "then Queenie England no take care a you. No send gunboat to shoot us all dead, if man a Tanaki come up and kill you."
At that Macglashin grew alarmed, and answered, "O, yes! The Queen of England would certainly avenge52 us." And he tried to explain the exact relation in which Scotchmen stood to the British crown—that they were just as much British subjects as Englishmen, entitled to precisely the same amount of protection. But the Chief couldn't be made to understand. The French skipper had evidently poisoned his mind against them. "Man a Tanaki don't want no Scotchman interfere with Chief when him go to sell him boy and him woman," the savage35 said angrily. "Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Queenie England no want Scotchman interfere with people in Tanaki. Scotchman better keep quiet in him house. Queenie England no mind Scotchman."
[pg 68] And no amount of reasoning produced any effect upon him.
The missionaries went to bed that evening with many misgivings53. They felt that for the first time, so far as the natives were concerned, the powerful protection of the British flag was now practically withdrawn54. They were alone, as strangers, among those excited black fellows.
At dead of night, while the two boys slept, a horrible din6 outside the mission-house awoke them. They looked out, and saw the red glare of torches outside. A frightful55 horde56 of Kanakas, naked save for their war-paint, drunk with the Frenchman's rum and armed with his Sniders, surrounded the frail57 building in a hideous58 mob of savagery59. As Martin put his head out of the lattice a bullet came whizzing past. He withdrew it for a moment, terrified, and then looked out again. As he did so the other Scotch missionary appeared upon the veranda60, half-dressed, and holding up his hand in dignified61 remonstrance62, began in Kanaka with his [pg 69] gentle mild voice, "My friends, my dear friends, ..." Before he could get any further, the Chief stepped forward, and aiming a blow at his gray locks with a sacred native tomahawk, felled the peaceful old teacher senseless to the ground. Martin shuddered63 with horror. The old man lay weltering in a pool of his red gushing64 gore65, while the savages danced in triumph over his prostrate66 body, or smeared67 themselves with great lines and circles of his warm heart-blood.
"Come on!" the Chief cried in Kanaka. "Kill all! Kill every one! They're taboo68 to our gods. Don't fear their gunboats. Queenie England won't trouble to protect a Scotchman!"
Then began a hideous orgy of wild lust69 and slaughter70. The savages rushed on, drunk with blood and rum, and dragged out the wife and children of the other missionary, whom they brained upon the spot, before the terrified eyes of the trembling Macglashins. The trader Williams ran up just then, with his revolver in [pg 70] his hand, followed by two faithful black servants from a neighboring island; but the French skipper had been cunning enough there too. "Him a Welshman!" the savages cried. "Queenie England no care for him!" For indeed he happened to be born in Wales. And they shot him down as he came, before he could open fire upon them. Then they turned to massacre71 the Macglashins, the only remaining Europeans on the island.
But just at that moment a sudden idea seemed to strike the Chief. He cried out, "Stop!" The savages fell back and listened with eagerness to what was coming. Then the Chief shouted out again in Kanaka—"I have a thought. The gods have sent it to me. This is my thought. We have killed enough for tonight. Let us catch them alive and bind72 them. Next moon is the great feast of my father Taranaka. I have an idea—a divine idea. Let us keep them till that day, and then, in honor of the gods, let us roast them and eat them."
THE SAVAGES FELL BACK. Page 70
The whole assembly answered with a wild shout of delighted assent—"Taranaka! Taranaka! Our great dead Chief! In honor of Taranaka, let us roast them and eat them."
So they rushed wildly on upon the defenseless white family, bound them in rude cords of native make, and carried them off in triumph to Taranaka's temple tomb in the palm-grove.
And that was as much as we could allow the boys to tell us at a time, of their strange adventures. We were afraid of overtaxing their strength at first, and tried to confine their attention as much as possible to tinned meats and sea-biscuit soaked in condensed milk; though I'm bound to admit that as soon as they began to recover appetite a bit, they addressed themselves steadily73 and seriously to their food, with true British pluck and perseverance74. In spite of the terrors from which they had just escaped, they did the fullest justice to Serang-Palo's cookery.
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1
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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impaired
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| adj.受损的；出毛病的；有（身体或智力）缺陷的v.损害，削弱( impair的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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digestions
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| n.消化能力( digestion的名词复数 )；消化，领悟 | |
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inverted
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| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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7
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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9
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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mariner
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| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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yarn
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| n.纱，纱线，纺线；奇闻漫谈，旅行轶事 | |
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gist
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| n.要旨；梗概 | |
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14
fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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15
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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fowls
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| 鸟( fowl的名词复数 )； 禽肉； 既不是这； 非驴非马 | |
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eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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apprentices
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| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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31
overhaul
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| v./n.大修，仔细检查 | |
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32
fomenting
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| v.激起，煽动（麻烦等）( foment的现在分词 ) | |
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discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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bestial
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| adj.残忍的；野蛮的 | |
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38
wheedle
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| v.劝诱，哄骗 | |
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sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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40
indentures
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| vt.以契约束缚（indenture的第三人称单数形式） | |
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41
glands
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| n.腺( gland的名词复数 ) | |
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42
measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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43
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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44
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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45
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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46
inflame
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| v.使燃烧；使极度激动；使发炎 | |
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47
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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48
meddlesome
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| adj.爱管闲事的 | |
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49
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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50
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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51
debauch
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| v.使堕落，放纵 | |
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52
avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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53
misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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54
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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55
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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56
horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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57
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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58
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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59
savagery
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| n.野性 | |
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60
veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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61
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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62
remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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63
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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64
gushing
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| adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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65
gore
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| n.凝血，血污；v.（动物）用角撞伤，用牙刺破；缝以补裆；顶 | |
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66
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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smeared
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| 弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上 | |
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68
taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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69
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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70
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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71
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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72
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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73
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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74
perseverance
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| n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠 | |
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