海底兩萬里 第257期 第20章 托列斯海峽(4)
Thank you, Conseil. Only I must ask you to postpone the question of new year's gifts, and temporarily accept a hearty handshake in their place. That's all I have on me.
謝謝，康塞爾，不過我要你把新年送禮的問題擱下來，現(xiàn)在暫且好好握一下手作為新年的賀儀。我目前只有這個在身邊。
Master has never been more generous,Conseil replied.
先生從沒有像現(xiàn)在這樣慷慨.康塞爾回答。
And with that, the gallant lad went away.
說完這話，這老實(shí)人走開了。
By January 2 we had fared 11,340 miles, hence 5,250 leagues, from our starting point in the seas of Japan. Before the Nautilus's spur there stretched the dangerous waterways of the Coral Sea, off the northeast coast of Australia. Our boat cruised along a few miles away from that daunting shoal where Captain Cook's ships wellnigh miscarried on June 10, 1770. The craft that Cook was aboard charged into some coral rock, and if his vessel didn't go down, it was thanks to the circumstance that a piece of coral broke off in the collision and plugged the very hole it had made in the hull.
1月2日，自我們從日本海出發(fā)到現(xiàn)在，我們已經(jīng)走了一萬一千三百四十海里，即五千二百五十里了。現(xiàn)在諾第留斯號的沖角面前望見的，就是澳大利亞洲東北邊岸珊瑚海的危險海面。 我們的船在距離幾海里遠(yuǎn)的地方沿暗礁脈駛過去；1770年6月10日，庫克率領(lǐng)的船幾乎在這里失事沉沒，庫克自己乘的船碰在一座巖石上，船所以不沉，那是由于一種特殊的情形，就是有一塊珊瑚石因船撿上去而崩下來，堵在被沖破的船身上，船因此得以保全。
I would have been deeply interested in visiting this long, 360-league reef, against which the ever-surging sea broke with the fearsome intensity of thunderclaps. But just then the Nautilus's slanting fins took us to great depths, and I could see nothing of those high coral walls.
我很想看一看這條長三百六十里的暗礁脈，暗礁脈上常有波濤洶涌的海水沖擊，奔騰澎湃，十分兇猛，好像隆隆的雷聲。可是，這個時候，諾第留斯號轉(zhuǎn)動縱斜機(jī)板，把我們帶到水底很深的地方，我沒有法子看到這座珊瑚造成的長城。
