2012年9月公共英语三级考试考前预测卷15

This is the weather Scobie loves. Lying in bed he touches his telescope lovingly, turning a wistful eye on the blank wall of rotting mud _ bricks which shuts off his view of the sea.?转自:考试网 - []

Scobie is getting on for seventy and still afraid to die; his one fear is that he will awake one morning and find himself dead-Lieutenant _ Commander Scobie, O.B.E. Consequently it gives him a severe shock every morning when the water _ carriers shriek under his window before dawn, waking him up. For a moment, he says, he dares not open his eyes. Keeping them fast shut (for fear they might open on the heavenly host) he gropes along the cake _ stand beside his bed and grabs his pipe. It is always loaded from the night before and an open matchbox stands beside it. The first whiff of tobacco restores both his composure and his eyesight. He breathes deeply, grateful for reassurance. He smiles. He gloats. Then, drawing the heavy sheepskin which serves him as a bed _ cover up to his ears, he sings a little triumphal song to the morning.

Taking stock of himself he discovers that he has the inevitable headache. His tongue is raw from last night s brandy. But against these trifling discomforts the prospect of another day in life weighs heavily. He pauses to slip in his false teeth. He places his wrinkled fingers to his chest and is comforted by the sound of his heart at work. He is rather proud of his heart. If you ever visit him when he is in bed he is almost sure to grasp your hand in his and ask you to feel it. Swallowing a little, you shove your hand inside his cheap night _ jacket to experience those sad, blunt, far _ away humps-like those of an unborn baby. He buttons up his pajamas with touching pride and give his imitation roar of animal health-"Bounding from my bed like a lion"-that is another of his phrases. You have not experienced the full charm of the man unless you have actually seen him, bent double with rheumatism, crawling out from between his coarse cotton sheets like a ruin. Only in the warmest months of the year do his bones thaw out sufficiently to enable him to stand erect. In the summer afternoons he walks in the park, his little head glowing like a minor sun, his jaw set in a violent expression of health.?

His tiny nautical pension is hardly enough to pay for one cockroach _ infested room; he ekes it out with an equally small salary from the Egyptian government, which carries with it the proud title of Bimbashi in the Police Force. Origins he h

as none. His past spreads over a dozen continents like a true subject of myth. And his presence is so rich with imaginary health that he needs nothing more-except perhaps an occasional trip to Cairo during Ramadhan, when his office is closed and presumably all crime comes to a standstill because of the past.?