1 / 21 句0 词已学
【阅读理解】Reading: The Ferry's Last Crossing
Mara first noticed the fire extinguisher on the ferry's brass rail. It was red and dull, even though the boat had not carried a passenger for nine years.
"Do you keep it there for luck?" she asked the captain, a studious man of 61 named Ivo. He did not look up. "For the engine," he said. "In 2016 we had a sudden eruption of smoke that could have endangered the whole crossing. Since then I keep it handy."
Mara was 34, a demographic researcher commissioned by the provincial government. Her appointment letter specified one task: to measure whether the ferry service between the megacity and the alluvial estuary should be discontinued. The current ferry ran twice a week, carried 140 people on average, and lost 2.3 million yuan a year. On paper the answer was obvious. But paper, she had learned, could be both vile and vague. Her own grandfather had been a ferryman; his fingerprint was still on an old ticket she kept in her trunk. So she ignored the logical conclusion and took the 6 a.m. boat. The crossing lasted 90 minutes. The water was elastic under the hull, and the sky, condensed into a thin band of orange, seemed to evoke some antique painting.
Ivo had been captain for 27 years. He was a workaholic with an undisguised loyalty to the route; he could imitate every sound of the engine and interpret a change in salinity from the colour of the wake. "The ferry is not a business," he asserted. "It is infrastructure. You cannot weigh loyalty in currency." Mara observed the passengers: a group of secondary-school students who commuted to the city for chemistry lessons; a vegetarian chef carrying linen bags of pesticide-free vegetables; a retired couple who needed the boat to reach a cardiovascular clinic. Their stories were not identical, yet they shared one function: the ferry was their only recourse. "Without it," the chef said, "we are scattered and irrelevant."
By the third trimester of her study, Mara had gathered a corpus of 212 interviews. At the same time, she ran a comparative survey of two other coastal towns where the service had been cut in 2019. In both, the local economy had suffered a measurable dystrophy: shops closed, young people left, and the remaining population grew older and more homogeneous. One town's birth rate fell 18 percent in four years; another lost its only clinic. Mara began to conceive a different design for her report. She would not recommend a refundable subsidy, nor a romantic defence of the past. She would argue that the ferry's value was not merely economic but social, and that the government's objective methods had a blind spot the size of the estuary.
Then came the storm of October 2023. A tropical depression, upgraded to a summit-level alert, struck during the evening crossing. Waves crushed the perimeter of the deck; the engine, resistant for decades, finally failed. Ivo used the extinguisher on a fire in the engine room and sustained second-degree burns on his hands. The 19 passengers were rescued, but the boat was beyond repair. The insurance compensation came to 470,000 yuan, far short of a new vessel. The province announced the route would close.
Mara's report was published in March 2024. It ran to 96 pages and included 31 charts, 14 tables and a petition signed by 3,800 residents. The ministry gave a concession: a smaller ferry, running three times a week, funded for two years. Not a victory, she thought; a reprieve. Ivo did not return. At 61, with bandaged hands, he began a small boat-repair workshop, where he taught six apprentices to read an engine the way he did. On the day the new ferry made its first crossing, Mara stood on the pier. The whistle sounded twice. She looked at the water, then at her grandfather's ticket, and wondered whether two years was long enough for a place to prove it deserved to exist.
Mara's report was published in March 2024. It ran to 96 pages and included 31 charts, 14 tables and a petition signed by 3,800 residents. The ministry gave a concession: a smaller ferry, running three times a week, funded for two years. Not a victory, she thought; a reprieve. Ivo did not return. At 61, with bandaged hands, he began a small boat-repair workshop, where he taught six apprentices to read an engine the way he did. On the day the new ferry made its first crossing, Mara stood on the pier. The whistle sounded twice. She looked at the water, then at her grandfather's ticket, and wondered whether two years was long enough for a place to prove it deserved to exist.
Questions
1. Why does Ivo keep the fire extinguisher on the ferry's brass rail?
A. For luck, as Mara first guessed. B. To sell it for insurance money. C. For the engine, after a smoke eruption in 2016. D. To use it as a decoration for passengers.
2. What was Mara's task according to her appointment letter?
A. To measure whether the ferry service should be discontinued. B. To interview 140 passengers every week. C. To increase the ferry's annual profit by 2.3 million yuan. D. To replace Captain Ivo after his retirement.
3. What does the word "reprieve" in the last paragraph most nearly mean?
A. A permanent solution. B. A temporary delay of a punishment. C. A financial loss. D. A complete victory.
4. What can be inferred about the two coastal towns where the service was cut in 2019?
A. Their birth rates increased by 18 percent. B. They received new ferries from the government. C. They became more popular with young people. D. Their economies declined and populations aged.
5. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. The life story of Captain Ivo after his retirement. B. The social value of a ferry and the struggle to keep it. C. The economic benefits of running a ferry service. D. The challenges of rescuing passengers during storms.