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  3. Most West African lorries are not in what one would call the first flush of youth, and I had learnt by bitter experience not to

Most West African lorries are not in what one would call the first flush of youth, and I had learnt by bitter experience not to

admin2015-05-23  20
问题     Most West African lorries are not in what one would call the first flush of youth, and I had learnt by bitter experience not to expect anything very much of them. But the lorry that arrived to take me up to the mountains was worse than anything I had seen before: it tottered on the borders of senile decay. It stood there on buckled wheels, wheezing and gasping with exhaustion from having to climb up the gentle slope to the camp, and I consigned myself and my loads to it with some fear. The driver, who was a cheerful fellow, pointed out that he would require my assistance in two very necessary operations: first, I had to keep the hand brake pressed down when travelling downhill, for unless it was held thus almost level with the floor it sullenly refused to function. Secondly, I had to keep a stern eye on the clutch, a willful piece of mechanism that seized every chance to leap out of its socket with a noise like a strangling leopard. As it was obvious that not even a West African lorry-driver could be successful in driving while crouched under the dashboard, I had to take over control of those instruments if I valued my life. So, while I ducked at intervals to put on the brake, amid the rich smell of burning rubber, our noble lorry jerked its way towards the mountains at a steady twenty miles per hour: sometimes, when a downward slope favoured it, it threw caution to the winds and careered(猛冲)along in a reckless fashion at twenty-five.
    For the first thirty miles the red earth road wound its way through the lowland forest, the giant trees standing in solid ranks alongside and their branches entwined(盘绕)in an archway of leaves above us. Slowly and almost imperceptibly the road.started to climb upwards, looping its way in languid curves round the forested hills. In the back of the lorry the boys lifted up their voices in song:
    Home again, home again,
    When shall I see ma home?
    The driver hummed the refrain(副歌)softly to himself glancing at me to see if I would object. To his surprise I joined in and so while the lorry rolled onwards, the boys in the back maintained the chorus while the driver and I harmonized and sang complicated bits.
    Breaks in the forest became more frequent the higher we climbed, and presently a new type of undergrowth began to appear: massive tree-ferns standing at the roadside on their thick, squat, hairy trunks. These ferns were the guardians of a new world, for suddenly, as though the hills had shrugged themselves free of a cloak, the forest disappeared. It lay behind us in the valley, while above us the hillside rose majestically, covered in a coat of waist-high grass. The lorry crept higher and higher, the engine gasping and shuddering with this unaccustomed activity. I began to think that we should have to push the wretched thing up the last two or three hundred feet, but to everyone’s surprise we made it, and the lorry crept on to the brow of the hill, trembling with fatigue, spouting steam from its radiator like a dying whale. We crawled to a standstill and the driver switched off the engine.
    " We must wait small-time, engine get hot," he explained, pointing to the forequarters of the lorry, which were by now completely invisible under a cloud of steam. Thankfully I descended from the red-hot inside of the cab and strolled down to where the road dipped into the next valley. From this vantage point I could see the country we had travelled through and the country we were to enter.
We can infer from the passage that the author was______.
选项 A、bored by the appearance of the grasslands ahead
B、reluctant to do any walking in so hot a climate
C、unfriendly towards the local driver and boys
D、a little surprised to have to help drive the lorry
答案D
解析 细节推理题。作者在文章第一段第一句虽然预测到了卡车的车况不太好，但并未想到差到如此地步，甚至还要自己帮着司机开车，因此有点惊讶，故[D]为正确答案。文中倒数第二段第三句提到，它留在了我们背后的山谷里，在我们上方，山坡傲然屹立，一层齐腰高的草覆盖其上。这里提到了grass，但不是[A]中所说的“对前方草原的样子感到厌烦”，故排除；文章最后一段第二句提到卡车的驾驶室炽热，然后作者闲逛到通向下一个山谷的小路上，所以[B]陈述错误，故排除；文章第二段第四句提到，令他吃惊的是，我和他一起唱了起来，车轮滚动向前，司机和我琴瑟和鸣，唱着复杂的部分，与此同时，后面的男孩们和我们一起合唱着，可知[C]陈述错误，故排除。
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