Трое в лодке, не считая собаки

THREE MEN 
IN A BOAT

(TO SAY NOTHING 
OF THE DOG)

Àäàïòàöèÿ, êîììåíòàðèè, 
çàäàíèÿ è ñëîâàðü 
À. Î. Ëîáîäû

УДК 373.167.1:821.111-93
ББК 81.2 Англ-922
 
Д40

ISBN 978-5-9925-1032-4
©  КАРО, 2015
Все права защищены

Джером, Джером Клапка.
Д40  
Трое в лодке, не считая собаки : книга для чтения на английском языке / Д. К. Джером ; [адаптация, комментарии, 
задания и словарь А. О. Лободы]. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 
2015. — 288 с. — (Серия «Reading with exercises»).

 
 
ISBN 978-5-9925-1032-4.

В данном издании вниманию читателя предлагается адаптированная 
и сокращенная версия известнейшей повести Джерома К. Джерома «Трое 
в лодке, не считая собаки». Автор описывает приключения троих друзей 
и их пса, отправившихся в путешествие на лодке по реке Темзе. Книга 
остается любимой поколениями читателей благодаря искрометному юмору 
Джерома.
 Текст снабжен лексическими и культурологическими комментариями. 
Упражнения направлены на отработку навыков, касающихся различных 
аспектов языка: расширение словарного запаса, освоение правильного произношения, проверку понимания текста. Работа над ответами на вопросы 
и выполнение заданий на пересказ текста дадут учащимся возможность 
развивать речевые навыки, а также размышлять над произведением. Кроме 
того, книга снабжена словарем.
Пособие адресовано учащимся старших классов школ с углубленным 
изучением языка, студентам филологических факультетов, а также всем, кто 
изучает английский язык самостоятельно.
УДК 373.167.1:821.111-93
ББК 81.2 Англ-922

Иллюстрации художника 
О. В. Вороновой

Chapter I

There were four of us — George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were 
sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how 
bad we were — bad from a medical point of view I mean, 
of course.
We were all feeling unwell, and we were getting 
quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of lighth-headedness, that he hardly 
knew what he was doing; and then George said that he 
had fits of light-headedness too, and hardly knew what 
he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of 
order. I knew it was my liver, because I had read a liverpill leaflet, in which the symptoms were described by 
which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. 
I had them all.
It is the most extraordinary thing, but whenever I 
read a medicine advertisement I always make a conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease. I 
remember going to the British Museum one day to read 
up the treatment for some slight illness — hay fever1. 
I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and 
then I turned the leaves, and began to study diseases. I 
came to typhoid fever — read the symptoms — discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for 

1 hay fever — сенная лихорадка (аллергическая реакция на 
пыльцу растений)

•   Three Men in a Boat

months without knowing it — wondered what else I 
had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance1 — found, as I expected, that I had that too, — began to get interested 
in my case, and so started alphabetically. Cholera I 
had, with serious complications; and diphtheria I was 
born with. I patently studied the twenty-six letters, 
and the only disease I had not got was housemaid’s 
knee2.
I sat and thought it over. What an interesting case 
I must be from a medical point of view, what a gift I 
should be to a class! Students would have no need to 
“walk the hospitals,” if they had me. I was a hospital in 
myself. All they need to do would be to walk round me, 
and, after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to 
examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel 
any pulse at all. Then, suddenly, it started off. I pulled 
out my watch and counted. I made it a hundred and 
forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I 
could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist 
up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a 
little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far 
as ever, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with 
the other. I had walked into that reading-room a happy, 
healthy man. I crawled out a weak wreck.
I went to my medical man. He is my old friend, and 
feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about 

1 St. Vitus’s Dance — пляска святого Витта, хорея (нервное 
заболевание)
2 housemaid’s knee — воспаление коленного сустава (болезнь 
типична для людей, часто встающих на колени, например, домохозяек, горничных)

Chapter I   •   5

the weather, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would 
do him a good turn1 by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He 
will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen 
hundred of your ordinary, usual patients, with only 
one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw 
him, and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?”
I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with 
telling you what is the matter with me. But I will tell 
you what is not the matter with me. I have not got 
housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s 
knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have 
not got it. Everything else, however, I have got.”
And I told him how I discovered it all. Then he examined me. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it to me, and I put it 
in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to 
the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read 
it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it.
I said: “You are a chemist?”
He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a store and family 
hotel combined, I might be able to help you. But I am 
only a chemist.”
I read the prescription. It ran:

“1 lb.2 beefsteak, with 1 pt.3 bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 every night.
And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t 
understand.4”

1 to do a good turn — оказать хорошую услугу
2 lb = pound — фунт (1 фунт = 0,45 кг)
3 pt = pint — пинта (1 пинта ≈ 0,5 л)
4 And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand. — 
И не забивай себе голову вещами, в которых не разбираешься.

•   Three Men in a Boat

I followed the directions and my life is still going on.
In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill 
leaflet, I had all the symptoms, the chief among them 
was “a general dislike of any work.” As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. My parents did not 
know, then, that it was my liver and they used to put it 
down to laziness. “You lazy little devil, you,” they used 
to say, “get up and do something for your living, can’t 
you?” — not knowing, of course, that I was ill. And 
they didn’t give me pills; they gave me clumps on the 
side of the head. And those clumps on the head often 
cured me better than a whole box of pills does now.
We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each 
other our diseases. I explained to George and William 
Harris how I felt when I got up in the morning, and William Harris told us how he felt when he went to bed; and 
George illustrated us by acting how he felt at night.
At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door and 
brought in the tray with supper. I must have been very 
weak at the time; because after the first half-hour or 
so, I seemed to take no interest in my food — an unusual thing for me — and I didn’t want any cheese.
After the supper, we refilled our glasses, lit our 
pipes, and continued to discuss our state of health. 
What was the matter with us we couldn’t be sure of; 
but all of us believed that it — whatever it was — was 
a result of overwork.
“What we want is rest,” said Harris.
“Rest and a complete change,” said George. “Change 
of scene and no necessity for thought.”
I agreed with George, and suggested that we should 
look for some quiet place, far from the noisy world, 
and spend there a sunny week.

Chapter I   •   7

“If you want rest and change, you can’t beat a sea 
trip,” said Harris.
I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does 
you good when you are going to have a couple of months 
of it, but, for a week, it is wicked. You start on Monday 
thinking that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave 
to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir 
Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus1 all rolled 
into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn’t come. On 
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were 
dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef 
tea2, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a faint, 
sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you 
feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, 
and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with 
your bag and umbrella in your hand, you are getting 
ready to step on the shore, you begin to really like it.
I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea 
trip once, for the benefit of his health. He took a return ticket from London to Liverpool; and when he got 
to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about was 
to sell that return ticket. It was offered round the town 
at a tremendous reduction, so I am told; and was eventually sold for eighteen-pence to a bilious-looking youth 
who had just been advised by his medical men to go to 
the sea-side, and take exercise.
“Sea-side!” said my brother-in-law, pressing the 
ticket affectionately into his hand; “why, you’ll have 
enough to last you a lifetime; and as for exercise! why, 

1 Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus — 
Джеймс Кук, Френсис Дрейк и Христофор Колумб (всемирно 
известные мореплаватели, географы, первооткрыватели)
2 beef tea — мясной бульон

•   Three Men in a Boat

you’ll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship, 
than you would on dry land.” He himself — my brotherin-law — came back by train. He said the North-Western Railway was healthy enough for him.
Another fellow I knew went for a week’s voyage 
round the coast, and, before they started, the steward 
came to him to ask whether he would pay for each meal 
as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole series. 
The steward recommended the latter course, as it would 
come so much cheaper. He said they would do him for 
the whole week at two pounds five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill. Lunch was 
at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six — 
soup, fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, 
and dessert. And a light meat supper at ten.
Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He 
didn’t feel so hungry as he thought he should, and so 
contented himself with a bit of boiled beef, and some 
strawberries and cream. He thought a good deal during the afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him 
that he had been eating nothing but boiled beef for 
weeks1, and at other times it seemed that he must have 
been living on strawberries and cream for years. Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed 
happy, either — seemed discontented like.
At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. 
The announcement aroused no enthusiasm within him, 
but he felt that there was some of that two-pound-five 
to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things 
and went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot 
ham, mixed with fried fish and greens, greeted him at 

1 he had been eating nothing but boiled beef for weeks — он 
несколько недель не ел ничего, кроме вареной говядины

Chapter I   •   9

the bottom of the ladder; and then the steward came up 
with an oily smile, and said:
“What can I get you, sir?”
“Get me out of this,” was the faint reply.
And they helped him to get upstairs, and left him. 
For the next four days he lived a simple life on thin 
captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, 
not the captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he felt better, and went in for weak tea and dry 
toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken 
broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed 
away he gazed after it regretfully.
“There she goes,” he said, “there she goes, with two 
pounds’ worth of food on board that belongs to me, and 
that I haven’t had.” He said that if they had given him 
another day he thought he could have put it right1.
So I was against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, 
upon my own account. But I was afraid for George. 
George said he should be all right, and would rather 
like it, but he would advise Harris and me not to think 
of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill. Harris said 
that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people 
managed to get sick at sea — said he thought people 
must do it on purpose — said he had often wished to 
be, but had never been able. Then he told us the anecdote of how he had gone across the Channel when it was 
so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their 
berths, and he and the captain were the only two people 
on board who were not ill.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick — on 
land. At sea, you come across plenty of people2 very 

1 he could have put it right — он смог бы все исправить
2 you come across plenty of people — ты сталкиваешься со 
множеством людей

•   Three Men in a Boat

bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met 
a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it 
was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide 
themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I could account for the seeming 
mystery easily enough. It was just off Southend Pier, I 
recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the 
port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to 
him to try and save him.
“Hi! come further in,” I said, shaking him by the 
shoulder. “You’ll be overboard.”
“Oh my! I wish I was,” was the only answer I could 
get; and there I had to leave him.
Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffeeroom of a Bath hotel, talking about his voyages, and 
explaining, with enthusiasm, how he loved the sea.
“Good sailor!” he replied in answer to a young man’s 
envious question; “well, I did feel a little queer once, I 
confess. It was off Cape Horn. The vessel was wrecked 
the next morning.”
I said:
“Weren’t you a little shaky by Southend Pier one 
day, and wanted to be thrown overboard?”
“Southend Pier!” he replied, with a puzzled expression.
“Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday three 
weeks.”
“Oh, ah — yes,” he answered, brightening up; “I remember now. I did have a headache that afternoon. It 
was the food, you know. It was the most disgraceful 
food I ever tasted in a respectable boat. Did you have 
any?”