7 ‘We’ll Never Let Him Go’
At six o’clock in the evening, Bean switched off the motor of his tractor and climbed down from thedriver’s seat. Bunce did the same. Both men had had enough. They were tired and stiff from drivingthe tractors all day. They were also hungry. Slowly they walked over to the small fox’s hole in thebottom of the huge crater¹. Bean’s face was purple with rage. Bunce was cursing the fox with dirtywords that cannot be printed. Boggis came waddling² up. ‘Dang and blast that filthy³ stinking⁴ fox!’ hesaid. ‘What the heck do we do now?’
‘I’ll tell you what we don’t do,’ Bean said. ‘We don’t let him go!’
‘We’ll never let him go!’ Bunce declared.
‘Never never never!’ cried Boggis.
‘Did you hear that, Mr Fox!’ yelled Bean, bending low and shouting down the hole. ‘It’s not overyet, Mr Fox! We’re not going home till we’ve strung you up dead as a dingbat!’ Whereupon the threemen all shook hands with one another and swore a solemn oath that they would not go back to theirfarms until the fox was caught.
‘What’s the next move?’ asked Bunce, the pot-bellied dwarf⁵.
‘We’re sending you down the hole to fetch him up,’ said Bean. ‘Down you go, you miserablemidget!’
‘Not me!’ screamed Bunce, running away.
Bean made a sickly smile. When he smiled you saw his scarlet⁶ gums. You saw more gums thanteeth. ‘Then there’s only one thing to do,’ he said. ‘We starve him out. We camp here day and nightwatching the hole. He’ll come out in the end. He’ll have to.’
So Boggis and Bunce and Bean sent messages down to their farms asking for tents, sleeping-bagsand supper.



7　我们决不让他跑掉
比恩在下午6点钟关闭了挖掘机的马达，从驾驶座上爬了下来。邦斯和他一样，也从挖掘机上爬了下来。两个人开了一天的挖掘机，累得浑身僵直，而且还饥肠辘辘。他们向大坑底部的那个狐狸的小洞口缓缓地走去。比恩气得满脸发紫。邦斯用不堪入耳的脏话咒骂着。博吉斯摇摇晃晃地走了过来。“他妈的，这个该死的不要脸的臭狐狸！”他说道，“咱们现在该怎么办？”

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