2 Spinach With Your Driftwood

2. SPINACH WITH YOUR DRIFTWOOD? We'll just leave Hiccup hanging off the window-frame, shall we, while we go back and discover exactly how he got himself into this mess in the first place. When Hiccup had woken up at seven o'clock that morning, he had absolutely no idea of what he would be doing only five hours after. He was rather excited, because it was his birthday, and although he was twelve years old, in fact technically speaking it was only his THIRD birthday, for Hiccup had been born on the 29th of February, a Leap Year. His first thought, when he woke up, was to make a wish. And this wish was, 'Please, Thor, could you make this a nice, quiet, PEACEFUL day? No shipwrecks, no storms, no close encounters with homicidal villains with hooks for hands, or with the deadlier type of dragon? Just for my birthday?' From this you may gather that peaceful days in the Archipelago were few and far between, and the life of a would-be Viking Hero was exciting, if exhausting. Hiccup got up, and spent some time persuading

2. 菠菜配漂流木？ 我们就把小嗝嗝挂在窗框上不管了，好吗，我们回去看看他到底是怎么把自己弄得一团糟的。 那天早上七点钟，小嗝嗝醒来了，他完全不知道五个小时后他要做什么。 他很兴奋，因为今天是他的生日，虽然他已经十二岁了，但严格来说，这只是他的第三个生日，因为小嗝嗝出生在闰年的2月29日。 他醒来后的第一个念头就是许个愿。 这个愿望是：“求求你，托尔，你能让今天过得美好、安静、平静吗？” 没有沉船事故，没有风暴，没有与手被钩子钩住的杀人恶棍或更致命的龙的近距离接触？ 就为了我的生日？”从这里你可能会发现，在群岛上平静的日子很少，而一个潜在的维京英雄的生活是令人兴奋的，如果筋疲力尽的话。 嗝嗝站了起来，花了些时间劝说

his pet dragon, Toothless, to eat a healthy breakfast. Dragons are supposed to eat plenty of vegetables, and, weirdly, lots of WOOD, small branches, twigs, the bark of trees. This seems to help their fire-breathing, and this is very important because a dragon who can't breathe fire gets very sick indeed, and eventually explodes. Toothless was a rather disobedient Common-or-Garden dragon, unusual only in that he was a lot smaller than all the other boys' dragons. He hadn't eaten his wood for weeks, and now he absolutely refused to eat either his spinach or his driftwood, and just sat in front of his plate blowing grumpy smoke rings. 'OK, then, Toothless,' said Hiccup, 'if you're going to be like this, I'm just going to go to the Burglary Competition without you. But when I come back, you better have eaten up ALL that driftwood or else there will be NO HADDOCK.' 'You is a very m-m-mean Master,'

他的宠物龙，无牙，吃一顿健康的早餐。 龙应该吃大量的蔬菜，奇怪的是，还吃大量的木头、小树枝、细枝和树皮。 这似乎有助于它们喷火，这一点非常重要，因为不能喷火的龙确实会病得很重，最终会爆炸。 “无牙”是一条非常不听话的普通花园龙，不寻常之处在于它比其他男孩养的龙都小得多。 他已经好几个星期没吃木头了，现在他既不吃菠菜，也不吃浮木，只是坐在盘子前，脾气暴躁地吹着烟圈。 “好吧，无牙，”小嗝嗝说，“如果你继续这样下去，我就不带你去参加入室盗窃比赛了。 但是等我回来的时候，你最好把浮木都吃光了，否则就没有黑线鳕了。“你是一个非常——非常——吝啬的主人。”

said Toothless with dignity, 'and your heart is made out of bogeys.'* In a big sulk, he climbed back into the bowl of spinach and sank down into it, like a very small crocodile into a mudbank. Only his nose and tail were showing, so it looked like the bowl of spinach was blowing smoke rings. Toothless swished his tail and spinach sprayed everywhere. Hiccup went off to the Pick-Pocketing Finals of the Burglary Competition. A nearby Tribe called the Bog-Burglars was visiting the Hooligans, and the Burglary Competition had been carrying on for the previous three days. The Bog-Burglars were frighteningly good in the Burglary Department, as their name suggests. They had already won the Sheep-Rustling Competition on the first day, and the Narrowboat-Nicking Competition on the second day. This was the final day of the Competition, the Pick-Pocketing Challenge, and the Hooligans needed to win this to salvage some pride. Unfortunately the Bog-Burglars were just as good

无牙威严地说，“你的心是妖怪做的。他气呼呼地爬回那碗菠菜里，陷了进去，就像一条小鳄鱼掉进了泥滩。 只露出鼻子和尾巴，看起来就像那碗菠菜在吹烟圈。 无牙甩了甩尾巴，菠菜喷得到处都是。 小嗝嗝参加了入室盗窃大赛的扒窃决赛。 附近一个叫做“沼泽窃贼”的部落正在拜访流氓队，而“入室盗窃比赛”已经进行了三天了。 沼泽夜贼就像他们的名字所暗示的那样，在入室行窃部是非常厉害的。 他们已经在第一天赢得了偷羊比赛，第二天又赢得了偷窄船比赛。 这是“扒窃挑战赛”的最后一天，小流氓们需要赢得这场比赛来挽回一些自豪感。 不幸的是，沼泽窃贼也一样厉害

at pick-pocketing as they were at everything else, and yet again the Hooligans were thoroughly beaten in the match. Hiccup had a particularly gloomy time in the Competition. Not only did he completely FAIL in the Burglary department, but his unpleasant cousin, Snotlout, had made some very sneering remarks about his birthday in front of everybody else: 'So the ickle baby Hiccup is three years old today, is he?' he had jeered. 'Trust a WEIRDO like you, Hiccup, to be born on the WEIRDEST day of the year… and bad luck for us that a FAILURE like you was ever born at all. If it wasn't for you, I would be the next Chief of the Hooligan Tribe, and a very brilliant and violent Chief I would be too… Burgle his shirt, Dogsbreath!' And Snotlout's sidekick Dogsbreath the Duhbrain, a brute of a boy with a ring through his nose and very limited communication skills, had removed Hiccup's shirt, and smooshed him into the mud. 'Everybody else may be celebrating your birthday at this Birthday Banquet this evening,' Snotlout had snarled, 'but I am wearing BLACK, because I am mourning the fact that you were ever born at all… Have a Miserable Third Birthday, Hiccup THE USELESS!' It was all very depressing.

他们对扒窃和其他事情都很在行，结果流氓们又一次在比赛中被彻底打败了。 小嗝嗝在比赛中度过了一段特别沮丧的时光。 他不但在入室盗窃课上完全不及格，而且他那讨厌的表兄鼻鼻子还当着大家的面嘲笑他的生日：“小嗝嗝今天满三岁了，是吗？”他嘲笑道。 “相信像你这样的怪人，小嗝嗝，出生在一年中最奇怪的一天……像你这样的失败者出生对我们来说真是太倒霉了。” 如果不是因为你，我就会成为下一任流氓部落的酋长，而且我也会成为一个非常聪明和暴力的酋长……撕破他的衬衫，狗臭！”鼻涕虫的伙伴狗屎呼吸，一个鼻子上戴着一个环，沟通能力非常有限的粗野男孩，脱下了嗝嗝的衬衫，把他撞到泥里。 “也许今晚大家都在生日宴会上庆祝你的生日，”鼻子鼻子吼道，“但我穿的是黑色，因为我为你这个人的存在感到悲哀……祝你三岁生日过得悲惨，没用的小嗝嗝！”这一切都非常令人沮丧。

A disappointed, dishevelled, and mud-splattered Hiccup got back again three hours later, with his friends Fishlegs and Camicazi. Fishlegs was a Hooligan like Hiccup, but he looked more like a daddy-long-legs with asthma and a squint. Camicazi was a very small, blonde Bog- Burglar, and she had hair as untouched by human hand as parts of the Amazonian rainforest. Despite her size, Camicazi was PARTICULARLY good at pick-pocketing, and she was carrying five Hooligan daggers, three Hooligan helmets of various different sizes, and a pair of Stoick the Vast's hairy underpants. 'I can't THINK how you got them off him without him noticing,' Hiccup was saying, with reluctant admiration. Stoick the Vast was Hiccup's father, a classic Viking of the traditional 'large and terrifying' type. 'He's going to hit the roof when he finds out…' 'Oh it was easy peasy lemon-squeezy,' boasted Camicazi, carelessly twiddling one of the daggers. (If Camicazi had a fault, it was that she did have a tendency to be rather pleased with herself.) 'He can't see a thing through that beard of his. I could have taken the shirt and the trousers off him as well if I'd wanted to.'

三个小时后，小嗝嗝带着他的朋友鱼腿和卡米卡齐失望地、蓬头垢面、浑身是泥地又回来了。 鱼腿像小嗝嗝一样是个流氓，但他看起来更像一个有哮喘和斜视的长腿爸爸。 Camicazi是一个非常小的金发沼泽窃贼，她的头发就像亚马逊雨林的一部分一样没有被人类触摸过。 尽管她身材高大，卡米卡齐却特别擅长扒窃，她带着五把流氓匕首，三个不同大小的流氓头盔，还有一条巨人斯托伊克的毛内裤。 “我真不明白，你是怎么在他不注意的情况下把它们从他身上摘下来的，”小嗝嗝不无钦佩地说。 浩瀚的斯托伊克是小嗝嗝的父亲，是一个典型的传统的“大而可怕”类型的维京人。 “哦，柠檬榨得很简单。”卡米卡齐得意地说，一边漫不经心地摆弄着一把匕首。 （如果说卡米卡齐有什么缺点的话，那就是她确实有一种对自己相当满意的倾向。）“透过他的胡子，他什么也看不见。 如果我想的话，我也可以把他的衬衫和裤子脱下来。”

'Well, thank Thor you didn't,' said Hiccup with huge relief. 'It would have put him in an even worse bate than he is already. I'm going to have to tiptoe round him for the next couple of days, as it is, so as not to get into trouble.' When the three of them walked into the room, Hiccup gasped in horror.

“好吧，感谢上帝，你没有这么做。”小嗝嗝松了一口气。 “那会使他的处境比现在更糟。 事实上，在接下来的几天里，我得小心翼翼地绕过他，以免惹上麻烦。”当他们三人走进房间时，小嗝嗝惊恐地倒吸了一口冷气。