Английский язык с Р. Л. Стивенсоном. Остров сокровищ

IT was longer than the squire imagined ere we were ready for the sea, and none of our first plans — not even Dr. Livesey’s of keeping me beside him — could be carried out as we intended. The doctor had to go to London for a physician to take charge of his practice; the squire was hard at work a Bristol; and I lived on at the Hall under the charge of old Redruth, the gamekeeper, almost a prisoner, but full of sea dreams and the most charming anticipations of strange island and adventures. I brooded by the hour together over the map, all the details of which I well remembered. Sitting by the fire in the house-keeper’s room, I approached that island in my fancy, from every possible direction; I explored every acre of its surface; I climbed a thousand times to that tall hill they call the Spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the most wonderful and changing prospects. Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought; sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us; but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.

So the weeks passed on (так недели проходили), till one fine day there came a letter addressed to Dr Livesey (до тех пор, пока в один прекрасный день пришло письмо, адресованное доктору Ливси), with this addition, “To be opened in the case of his absence, by Tom Redruth, or young Hawkins

(с этим добавлением: «Вскрыть, в случае его отсутствия, Тому Редруту или молодому Хокинсу).” Obeying this order, we found, or rather, I found (выполняя это требование, мы обнаружили = прочли, вернее, я прочел) — for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading anything but print (так как егерь был неискусным: «бедной рукой» в прочтении всего, чего угодно, кроме печатного текста)

— the following important news (следующие важные известия): —

absence [`æbsəns] obeying [əu`beɪŋ] anchor [`æŋkə]

So the weeks passed on, till one fine day there came a letter addressed to Dr Livesey, with this addition, “To be opened in the case of his absence, by Tom Redruth, or young Hawkins.” Obeying this order, we found, or rather, I found — for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading anything but print — the following important news: —