Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr Fox
1 The Three Farmers
Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of the farms
had done well. They were rich men. They were also nasty men. All
three of them were about as nasty and mean as any men you could
meet. Their names were Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bunce and Farmer
Bean.
Boggis was a chicken farmer. He kept thousands of chickens. He
was enormously fat. This was becau he ate three boiled chickens
smothered with dumplings every day for breakfast, lunch and supper.
Bunce was a duck-and-goo farmer. He kept thousands of ducks
and gee. He was a kind of pot-bellied dwarf. He was so short his
chin would have been underwater in the shallow end of any swimmingpool
in the world. His food was doughnuts and goo-livers. He
mashed the livers into a disgusting paste and then stuffed the paste
into the doughnuts. This diet gave him a tummy-ache and a beastly
temper.
Bean was a turkey-and-apple farmer. He kept thousands of turkeys
in an orchard full of apple trees. He never ate any food at all. Instead,
he drank gallons of strong cider which he made from the apples in his
orchard. He was as thin as a pencil and the cleverest of them all.
Boggis and Bunce and Bean
One fat, one short, one lean.
The horrible crooks
So different in looks
今天是你的生日我的祖国
Were none the less equally mean.
That is what the children round about ud to sing when they saw
them.
2 Mr Fox
On a hill above the valley there was a wood.
In the wood there was a huge tree.
Under the tree there was a hole.
In the hole lived Mr Fox and Mrs Fox and their four Small Foxes.
Every evening as soon as it got dark, Mr Fox would say to Mrs Fox,
‘Well, my darling, what shall it be this time? A plump chicken from
Boggis? A duck or a goo from Bunce? Or a nice turkey from Bean?’
And when Mrs Fox had told him what she wanted, Mr Fox would creep
down into the valley in the darkness of the night and help himlf.
Boggis and Bunce and Bean knew very well what was going on, and
it made them wild with rage. They were not men who liked to give
anything away. Less still did they like anything to be stolen from them.
So every night each of them would take his shotgun and hide in a dark
place somewhere on his own farm, hoping to catch the robber.
But Mr Fox was too clever for them. He always approached a farm
with the wind blowing in his face, and this meant that if any man were
lurking in the shadows ahead, the wind would carry the smell of that
man to Mr Fox’s no from far away. Thus, if Mr Boggis was hiding
behind his Chicken Hou Number One, Mr Fox would smell him out
from fifty yards off and quickly change direction, heading for Chicken
Hou Number Four at the other end of the farm.
‘Dang and blast that lousy beast!’ cried Boggis.
‘I’d like to rip his guts out!’ said Bunce.
‘He must be killed!’ cried Bean.
‘But how?’ said Boggis. ‘How on earth can we catch the blighter?’
Bean picked his
no delicately with a long finger. ‘I have a plan,’ he
said.
‘You’ve never had a decent plan yet,’ said Bunce.
‘Shut up and listen,’ said Bean. ‘Tomorrow night we will all hide just
outside the hole where the fox lives. We will wait there until he comes
out. Then . . . Bang! Bang-bang-bang.’
‘Very clever,’ said Bunce. ‘But first we shall have to find the hole.’
‘My dear Bunce, I’ve already found it,’ said the crafty Bean. ‘It’s up
in the wood on the hill. It’s under a huge tree . . .’
3 The Shooting
‘Well, my darling,’ said Mr Fox. ‘What shall it be tonight?’
‘I think we’ll have duck tonight,’ said Mrs Fox.
‘Bring us two fat ducks, if you plea. One for you and me, and one
泰国景区for the children.’
‘Ducks it shall be!’ said Mr Fox. ‘Bunce’s best!’
‘Now do be careful,’ said Mrs Fox.
‘My darling,’ said Mr Fox, ‘I can smell tho goons a mile away. I
can even smell one from the other. Boggis gives off a filthy stink of
rotten chicken-skins. Bunce reeks of goo-livers, and as for Bean, the
fumes of apple cider hang around him like poisonous gas.’
‘Yes, but just don’t get careless,’ said Mrs Fox. ‘You know they’ll be
waiting for you, all three of them.’
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ said Mr Fox. ‘I’ll e you later.’
But Mr Fox would not have been quite so cocky had he known
exactly where the three farmers were waiting at that moment. They
were just outside the entrance to the hole, each one crouching behind
a tree with his gun loaded. And what is more, they had chon their
positions very carefully, making sure that the wind was not blowing
from them towards the fox’s hole. In fact, it was blowing in the
opposite direction. There was no chance of them being ‘smelled out’.
Mr Fox crept up the dark tunnel to the mouth of his hole. He poked
his long handsome face out into the night air and sniffed once.
He moved an inch or two forward and stopped.
He sniffed again. He was always especially careful when coming out
from his hole.
He inched forward a little more. The front half of his body was now
in the open.
His black no twitched from side to side, sniffing and sniffing for
the scent of danger. He found none, and he was just about to go
trotting forward into the wood when he heard or thought he heard a
tiny noi, a soft rustling sound, as though someone had moved a foot
ever so gently through a patch of dry leaves.
Mr Fox flattened his body against the ground and lay very still, his
ears pricked. He waited a long time, but he heard nothing more.
‘It must have been a field-mou,’ he told himlf, ‘or some other
small animal.’
He crept a little further out of the hole . . . then further still. He was
almost right out in the open now. He took a last careful look around.
The wood was murky and very still. Somewhere in the sky the moon
was shining.
Just then, his sharp night-eyes caught a g
lint of something bright
behind a tree not far away. It was a small silver speck of moonlight
shining on a polished surface. Mr Fox lay still, watching it. What on
earth was it? Now it was moving. It was coming up and up . . . Great
heavens! It was the barrel of a gun! Quick as a whip, Mr Fox jumped
back into his hole and at that same instant the entire wood emed to
explode around him. Bang-bang! Bang-bang! Bang-bang!
The smoke from the three guns floated upward in the night air.
Boggis and Bunce and Bean came out from behind their trees and
walked towards the hole.
‘Did we get him?’ said Bean.
One of them shone a flashlight on the hole, and there on the
ground, in the circle of light, half in and half out of the hole, lay the
poor tattered bloodstained remains of . . . a fox’s tail. Bean picked it
up. ‘We got the tail but we misd the fox,’ he said, tossing the thing
away.
‘Dang and blast!’ said Boggis. ‘We shot too late. We should have let
fly the moment he poked his head out.’
‘He won’t be poking it out again in a hurry,’ Bunce said.
Bean pulled a flask from his pocket and took a swig of cider. Then
he said, ‘It’ll take three days at least before he gets hungry enough to
come out again. I’m not sitting around here waiting for that. Let’s dig
him out.’
‘Ah,’ said Boggis. ‘Now you’re talking n. We can dig him out in a
couple of hours. We know he’s there.’
‘I reckon there’s a whole family of them down that hole,’ Bunce said.
‘Then we’ll have the lot,’ said Bean. ‘Get the shovels!’
4 The Terrible Shovels
Down the hole, Mrs Fox was tenderly licking the stump of Mr Fox’s tail
to stop the bleeding. ‘It was the finest tail for miles around,’ she said
between licks.
‘It hurts,’ said Mr Fox.
中国移动怎么查话费‘I know it does, sweetheart. But it’ll soon get better.’
‘And it will soon grow again, Dad,’ said one of the Small Foxes.
纹理烫女中长发
‘It will never grow again,’ said Mr Fox. ‘I shall be tailless for the rest
of my life.’ He looked very glum.
There was no food for the foxes that night, and soon the children
dozed off. Then Mrs Fox dozed off. But Mr Fox couldn’t sleep becau
of the pain in the stump of his tail. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘I suppo I’m
lucky to be alive at all. And now they’ve found our hole, we’re going to
have to move out as soon as possible. We’ll never get any peace if we
. . . What was that?’ He turned his head sharply and listened. The
noi he heard now was the most frightening noi a fox can ever hear
– the scrape-scrape-scraping of shovels digging into the soil.
‘Wake up!’ he shouted. ‘They’re digging us out!’
Mrs Fox was wide awake in one cond. She sat up, quivering all
over. ‘Are you sure that’s it?’ she whispered.
‘I’m positive! Listen!’
‘They’ll kill my children!’ cried Mrs Fox.
‘Never!’ said Mr Fox.
‘But darling, they will!’ sobbed Mrs Fox. ‘You
know they will!’
Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch went the shovels above their heads.
Small stones and bits of earth began falling from the roof of the
tunnel.
‘How will they kill us, Mummy?’ asked one of the Small Foxes. His
round black eyes were huge with fright. ‘Will there be dogs?’ he said.
Mrs Fox began to cry. She gathered her four children clo to her
and held them tight.
Suddenly there was an especially loud crunch above their heads and
the sharp end of a shovel came right through the ceiling. The sight of
this awful thing emed to have an electric effect upon Mr Fox. He
jumped up and shouted, ‘I’ve got it! Come on! There’s not a moment
to lo! Why didn’t I think of it before!’
‘Think of what, Dad?’
‘A fox can dig quicker than a man!’ shouted Mr Fox, beginning to
dig. ‘Nobody in the world can dig as quick as a fox!’
The soil began to fly out furiously behind Mr Fox as he started to dig
for dear life with his front feet. Mrs Fox ran forward to help him. So did
the four children.
‘Go downwards!’ ordered Mr Fox. ‘We’ve got to go deep! As deep as
we possibly can!’
The tunnel began to grow longer and longer. It sloped steeply
downward. Deeper and deeper below the surface of the ground it
went. The mother and the father and all four of the children were
banksdigging together. Their front legs were moving so fast you couldn’t e
them. And gradually the scrunching and scraping of the shovels
became fainter and fainter.
After about an hour, Mr Fox stopped digging. ‘Hold it!’ he said. They
all stopped. They turned and looked back up the long tunnel they had
just dug. All was quiet. ‘Phew!’ said Mr Fox. ‘I think we’ve done it!
They’ll never get as deep as this. Well done, everyone!’
They all sat down, panting for breath. And Mrs Fox said to her
children, ‘I should like you to know that if it wasn’t for your father we
should all be dead by now. Your father is a fantastic fox.’
Mr Fox looked at his wife and she smiled. He loved her more than
ever when she said things like that.
5 The Terrible Tractors
As the sun ro the next morning, Boggis and Bunce and Bean were
超好听的来电铃声still digging. They had dug a hole so deep you could have put a hou
into it. But they had not yet come to the end of the foxes’ tunnel. They
were all very tired and cross.
‘Dang and blast!’ said Boggis. ‘Who rotten idea was this?’
‘Bean’s idea,’ said Bunce.
Boggis and Bunce both stared at Bean. Bean took another swig of
cider, then put the flask back into his pocket without offering it to the
others. ‘Listen,’ he said angrily, ‘I want that fox! I’m going to get that
fox! I’m not giving in till I’ve strung him up over my front porch, dead
as a dumpling!’
‘We can’t get him by digging, that’s for sure,’ said the fat Boggis.
‘I’ve had enough of digging.’
Bunce, the little pot-bellied dwarf, looked up at Bean and said, ‘Have
you got
any more stupid ideas, then?’
‘What?’ said Bean. ‘I can’t hear you.’ Bean never took a bath. He
never even washed. As a result, his earholes were clogged with all
kinds of muck and wax and bits of chewing-gum and dead flies and
stuff like that. This made him deaf. ‘Speak louder,’ he said to Bunce,
and Bunce shouted back, ‘Got any more stupid ideas?’
Bean rubbed the back of his neck with a dirty finger. He had a boil
coming there and it itched. ‘What we need on this job,’ he said, ‘is
王维的古诗machines . . . mechanical shovels. We’ll have him out in five minutes
with mechanical shovels.’
This was a pretty good idea and the other two had to admit it.
‘All right then,’ Bean said, taking charge. ‘Boggis, you stay here and
e the fox doesn’t escape. Bunce and I will go and fetch our
machinery. If he tries to get out, shoot him quick.’
The long, thin Bean walked away. The tiny Bunce trotted after him.
The fat Boggis stayed where he was with his gun pointing at the foxhole.
Soon, two enormous caterpillar tractors with mechanical shovels on
their front ends came clanking into the wood. Bean was driving one.
Bunce the other. The machines were both black. They were
murderous, brutal-looking monsters.
‘Here we go, then!’ shouted Bean.
‘Death to the fox!’ shouted Bunce.
The machines went to work, biting huge mouthfuls of soil out of the
hill. The big tree under which Mr Fox had dug his hole in the first place
was toppled like a matchstick. On all sides, rocks were nt flying and
trees were falling and the noi was deafening.
Down in the tunnel the foxes crouched, listening to the terrible
clanging and banging overhead. ‘What’s happening, Dad?’ cried the
Small Foxes. ‘What are they doing?’
Mr Fox didn’t know what was happening or what they were doing.
‘It’s an earthquake!’ cried Mrs Fox.
‘Look!’ said one of the Small Foxes. ‘Our tunnel’s got shorter! I can
谷歌中国总部e daylight!’
They all looked round, and yes, the mouth of the tunnel was only a
few feet away from them now, and in the circle of daylight beyond
they could e the two huge black tractors almost on top of them.
‘Tractors!’ shouted Mr Fox. ‘And mechanical shovels! Dig for your
lives! Dig, dig, dig!’
6 The Race
Now there began a desperate race, the machines against the foxes. In
the beginning, the hill looked like this:
After about an hour, as the machines bit away more and more soil
from the hilltop, it looked like this:
Sometimes the foxes would gain a little ground and the clanking
nois would grow fainter and Mr Fox would say, ‘We’re going to make
it! I’m sure we are!’ But then a few moments later, the machines
would come back at them and the crunch of the mighty shovels would
get louder and louder. Once the foxes actually saw the sharp metal
edge of one of the shovels as it scraped up the earth just behind them.
‘Keep going, my darlings!’ panted Mr Fox. ‘Don