【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 90

 He aimed them towards Uweinat and its granite¹ plateau so they could get water, take 

shelter in the caves. It was a halfway² point. In the 1930 he had discovered caves with rock paintings there. But the plateau was crawling with Allies and he couldn’t use the wells there. He struck out into the sand desert again. They raided British petrol dumps to fill up their tanks. In the Kharga Oasis³ they switched into British uniforms and hung British army number plates on their vehicles. When they were spotted⁴ from the air they hid in the wadis for as long as three days, completely still. Baking to death in the sand. 

“It took them three weeks to reach Cairo. Almdsy shook hands with Eppler and left him. This is where we lost him. He turned and went back into the desert alone. （We think he crossed it again, back towards Tripoli. But that was the last time he was ever seen. ）The British picked up Eppler eventually and used the Rebecca code to feed false information to Rommel about El Alamein.” 

“I still don’t believe it, David.”  Hana said.

(“The man who helped catch Eppler in Cairo was named Sansom.” 

“Delilah.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Maybe he’s Sansom.” 

“I thought that at first. He was very like Almdsy. A desert lover as well. He had spent his childhood in the Levant and knew the Bedouin.) But the thing about Almasy was, he could fly. We are talking about someone who crashed in a plane. Here is this man, burned beyond recognition, who somehow ends up in the arms of the English at Pisa. (Also, he can get away with sounding English. Almdsy went to school in England. In Cairo he was referred to as the English spy.” )Hana sat on the hamper⁵ watching Caravaggio. 

1 granite   

adj.花岗岩，花岗石

参考例句：

• They squared a block of granite.他们把一块花岗岩加工成四方形。
• The granite overlies the older rocks.花岗岩躺在磨损的岩石上面。

2 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

3 oasis   

n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方

参考例句：

• They stopped for the night at an oasis.他们在沙漠中的绿洲停下来过夜。
• The town was an oasis of prosperity in a desert of poverty.该镇是贫穷荒漠中的一块繁荣的“绿洲”。

4 spotted   

adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的

参考例句：

• The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
• Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。

5 hamper   

vt.妨碍，束缚，限制；n.(有盖的)大篮子

参考例句：

• There are some apples in a picnic hamper.在野餐用的大篮子里有许多苹果。
• The emergence of such problems seriously hamper the development of enterprises.这些问题的出现严重阻碍了企业的发展。