儿童英语读物《神奇树屋》第十三册 Vacation Under the Volcano 6 The End is Here
Jack threw open the door to the room of scrolls. Heand Annie rushed in and ran over to the shelves.
Jack pulled out the piece of paper with the Latintitle on it:
Vir Fortissimus in Mundo"Okay " he said. "We have to find the scroll withthis title."They began frantically unrolling scrolls one by one.
They were all handwritten in Latin.
"Here it is!" said Annie.
She held up a scroll. The words at the top matchedthe one on their paper.
11"Yay," said Jack. "I wish I could read Latin so wecould find out what the story is.""Don't think about it now!" said Annie. "Let's go!"Annie handed the scroll to Jack, then started out ofthe room.
"Come on," she said. "Bring it!""I just want to check and see what the story'sabout," said Jack.
He put the scroll in the leather bag. Then he flippedthrough the book on Roman times, looking for apicture of the ancient scroll. In the middle of the book,he found a picture of a volcano erupting over a town.
Under the picture was written:
For 800 years, Mount Vesuvius was a peacefulmountain, rising above the town of Pompeii. Then, atnoon on August 24, A.D. 79, it erupted into a deadlyvolcano.
"Oh, no," whispered Jack. "August 24, A.D. 79-that'stoday! Oh, man, what time is it?" He lookedaround wildly. "Annie!"She was gone again.
"Annie!"Jack grabbed the leather bag. Then, clutching thebook, he tore out of the scroll room.
"Annie!" he cried.
"What?" Annie appeared at the door to the diningroom.
"V-v-volcano!" stuttered Jack.
"What?" said Annie. "It's--it's coming--a volcano--atnoon!" said Jack. Annie gasped.
"What time is it?" cried Jack.
"So that' s what the soothsayer meant!" Annie said.
"The end is near.""What time is it?" Jack asked again. He lookedaround the garden.
He saw something near the mermaid fountain.
"A sundial!" he said. "That's how the Romans toldtime!"Jack and Annie raced to the sundial. "What timedoes it say?" said Annie.
"I don't know," said Jack. His hands shook as heturned the pages of the book. He stopped on a pictureof a sundial. It showed examples of different times.
Jack looked back and forth from the page to the realsundial in the garden.
"Here!" he said. He had found the one that matched.
Jack read the writing under the picture:
The shadow on the sundial can hardly he seen atnoon.
"Oh, man," he whispered. He looked at Annie. "Theend isn't near; the end is here."Just then he heard a terrible blast. It was the loudestsound he had ever heard.
