Module 7学霸新视野外刊阅读-【拔尖特训】2023-2024学年八年级上册英语 外研社版

外刊阅读 ▶ “答案与解析”见P23 荒岛海牛 It was November 1741, and the Russian science ship St. Peter was lost at sea between Siberia and Alaska. Hit by storms, the St. Peter moved where it could. Al the sailors(水 手) were too il to control it. Then on the morning of November 5, the men found the land! At first, they hoped that they􀆳d come back to Kamchatka, from which they􀆳d set out five months earlier. Instead, as they got close to the beach, they found them- selves on an island without trees or humans. And it was the beginning of a dangerous, ten- month fight. Whether the men could live depended on an animal unknown to science. Al around the island, moving in and out with water, were large black animals. The ship􀆳s naturalist, Georg Wilhelm Steler, had read about manatees, or “sea cows” that lived in the tropics(热 带). The sea cows here, however, were much larger. Reaching up to about 28 feet long and weighing about 8 tons, they were the size of smal whales. The sea cows lived in groups, the adults creating protective circles around the young. They used their two short flippers(鳍肢) to move along the rocks under the water. Seaguls stayed and ate something on their backs. Steler reported that every few minutes the sea cows lifted their heads from the water to breathe. The researchers are thought to be the first Europeans to see the coast of Alaska. They lived for months on almost nothing but hard biscuits and water. On the island, the weakened men ate only what they could find, s