We learned something was happening when one of the ship’s officers came up to the chief engineer, who was sit-ting at the table, and spoke to him in a low voice. The chief engineer got up at once, and with a short excuse, left the dining room. We thought that there had been an accident or that a fire had broken out. We soon noticed that the ship was slowing down, and then, with a sudden violent motion, it began to turn around. Some of the passengers stopped eating and rushed up to the deck (甲板). Others crowded around the ship windows and we finally joined the watchers.
It turned out that one of the sailors had seen a man in the ocean some distance from the ship. The captain had then ordered the ship to be turned around at once. A lifeboat had already been lowered into the water. In it were four sailors, an officer and the ship’s doctor. About two hundred yards away, the man was seen holding on something that looked like a broken part of a small fishing boat.
The lifeboat finally reached the man, and he was then pulled into the boat. Why, then, was the man floating (飘浮) on the ocean？He had missed the ship and decided to try to catch it in his fishing boat, and he made it!
36. From the passage we can learn that the officer actually told the chief engineer that there was _____.
A. an accident B. a fire C. a man in the ocean D. some passengers on the deck
37. How many people were there in the lifeboat in the be-ginning?
A. Four. B. Five. C. Six. D. Seven.
38. The man floating on the ocean was probably _____.
A. a sailor B. a passenger C. a swimmer D. a fisherman
39. The underlined sentence in the last paragraph probably means _____.
A. he finally succeeded
B. he made all this trouble
C. he made the fishing boat himself
D. he made this joke